From “para-transit” to transit? Power, politics and popular transport

This chapter reviews shifting evidence, understandings and debates around the politics of privately or cooperatively owned minibus and taxi systems often called paratransit or informal transport. These systems tend to run unscheduled mobility services that cater to the majority of residents in many of the world's cities. Until recently, these forms of transit have been under-scrutinized and relatively absent from transportation planning. The assumption has been that they would eventually be replaced. Yet except in a few cases, this has not occurred. Challenges for planners include addressing diverse informalities associated with these systems, the politics around change, poor data and understanding of operations, as well as attitudes among policymakers who often tend to vilify or marginalize these systems in planning. As transportation planning increasingly recognizes the role of diverse forms of shared mobility and last mile options, para or informal transit comes to the fore as playing a key integrating role across other modes. Hence, a paradigm shift from paratransit to transit is under way with more scholars embracing these neglected modes as a critical form of popular transport that needs to be thoughtfully integrated into transportation planning-especially in cities where popular modes are dominant. In order to move forward with improvements and reforms, we need a better understanding of the politics that produced these popular transport systems in the first place and the social injustices underlying them including often severe labor exploitation, disregard of passenger needs and lack of subsidies and investment in these systems that serve the poor and middle class. Overall, an examination of paratransit and informal transport as popular transport reveals complex threads of power that reproduce persistent spatial, environmental and social injustices. This suggests the need for more nuanced, inclusive and holistic approaches to transportation planning and reform for them to be effective, equitable and just.