Improving paratransit service: Lessons from inter-city matatu cooperatives in Kenya

Abstract

While providing essential access for large portions of city populations, the quality of paratransit services in Sub-Saharan African cities is poor. Poor quality of service can be attributed to two features of the paratransit business operating model: driver remuneration on the basis of a daily 'target system'; and cash-based business management in which vehicle depreciation is ignored as an operating expense. In Kenya, the voluntary organisation of fragmented inter-city matatu businesses into Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs) has resulted in improved service, regulatory compliance and technology adoption, but little is known of how they operate. The aim of this paper is to gain insight into how the Kenyan inter-city matatu SACCOs are organised and have improved services, and to explore the transferability of this experience and the lessons it offers. The exploratory nature of the study, and constrained resources, necessitated that the research adopt a qualitative case study method. It was found that most of the case study SACCOs have addressed the root causes of poor service quality by shifting the remuneration of drivers from daily cash targets to salaries, and by requiring vehicle depreciation costing through compulsory contributions to the cooperative's capital savings from which vehicle acquisition and repair loans can be derived. Due to the particular shuttle-like nature of inter-city services and the considerable institutional support that exists in Kenya for cooperatives, the direct transfer of successes to other contexts is likely to prove difficult. Identifying the features of the inter-city SACCO model that have led to paratransit service improvements, and attempting to replicate these, may therefore be more effective than attempting to replicate the model in its entirety. These features are argued to be operator consolidation, accompanied by salaried drivers, systematic vehicle monitoring and compulsory vehicle depreciation costing. They can be adopted in other forms of paratransit organisation and regulation, but will require considerable adaptation to context.

‘You will build me’: fiscal disobedience, reciprocity and the dangerous negotiations of redistribution on Nairobi'smatatu

“…From Lagos to Johannesburg to Nairobi, paratransit is common. One of the practices that transport scholars consider to be most responsible for the poor service of paratransit is what is referred to as the 'target system', whereby operators pay owners of vehicles a target amount at the end of every day (Behrens et al 2017). Although Mutongi and others have shown that passengers often pressure drivers into bad driving behaviour, it is argued that target systems 'create strong structural incentives for drivers to compete aggressively for passengers in the road space, overload vehicles, speed as they attempt to increase the number of service trips during peak periods, and delay departures from termini until the vehicle is full during off-peak periods' (ibid.…”

"You are asking me to pay for my legs"

“…The vast majority of research on transportation in developing countries has a strong focus on policy. Examples include explorations on how capacity-building of operators could inform the public transport reform process [75]; the progress, process, and risks of engaging operators for public transport reform in Cape Town, South Africa [76]; policy challenges in developing countries on hybrid urban transport systems caused by the complexities and constraints of old, existing systems [25]; the organization and improved services of inner-city Matatu (taxis) and the potential for their transferability [8]; and the structuring of a user satisfaction model based on observed and unobserved variables from commuters in Nairobi, Kenya [30]. We also encountered literature on the role played by motorcycle taxis in providing IPT: they contribute to increased employment opportunities [62], improve access and last mile distribution [32], increase women ridership in urban areas [71], and potentially expand urban transportation systems [21].…”

Design of Flexible Vehicle Scheduling Systems for Sustainable Paratransit Services

“…In every city, paratransit services provide crucial means of mobility and connectivity for people. Few recent studies investigated the importance of quality and efficiency improvement in providing paratransit services [13,14]. Plano et al [15] performed a survey on driver attitude of interventions in evening paratransit service.…”

“…The heuristics were widely studied for solving ConVRP [25][26][27][28]. Further, the ConVRP problem dealing with different types of customers was solved using a template-based tabu search algorithm proposed by Tarantilis, Stavropoulou, and Repoussis [13]. The algorithm involves a two-level decomposition scheme.…”