Urban Transport Infrastructure November 2018 Urban Transport Infra November 2018 | Page 57

Editorial
How can shared and on-demand mobility
complement public transit?
S
ão Paulo is home to 20.7
million residents, making it
the biggest city in
the
Southern
Hemisphere.
Commuting in this bustling Brazilian
city is a serious affair: the region sees
a whopping 44 million trips every
day, with public transit, motorized
and non-motorized modes each
accounting for about 1/3 of the total.
The average public transit commute
clocks in at 67 minutes. However,
commuting times can be much longer
for those in the periphery, where
lower-income households tend to live.
This penalizes the mobility of the
poor.
For
instance,
wealthier
residents take almost twice as many
trips as poorer residents.
While public transit has a
relatively high reach across the
metropolitan region, it falls short of
the growing demand, and historical
underinvestment has led to growing
motorization. Congestion in Sao
Paulo is among the worst in Latin
America. In 2013, the productivity
losses and pollution associated with
congestion costed the metropolitan
area close to 8% of its GDP, or over
1% of Brazil’s total GDP.
In the last decades, the World
Bank Group has been working closely
WWW.URBANTRANSPORTNEWS.COM
with São Paulo to boost public
transport infrastructure and policies,
which has helped the city expand
mass transit coverage and develop a
more comprehensive approach to
urban transport.
The latest wave of disruptive
technologies that is reshaping the
transport sector –including shared
mobility platforms, electric vehicles,
and automation— are now providing
exciting new ways to build on these
gains. If properly integrated into
broader public transport policies,
these innovations have the potential
to reduce the use of single-occupancy
vehicles, decrease pollution and
carbon emissions, improve traffic
flow, and save energy.
Among all these new technologies,
let’s take a closer look at shared
mobility and on-demand mobility
solutions like ride-hailing apps or
bikeshare systems, which have been
growing rapidly around the world.
While there has been much talk
about ride-hailing and its impact on
congestion, we have seen a lot less
research about how these emerging
mobility
options
could
affect
commuting habits and transform
public transport. By providing
reliable rides at a relatively affordable
57
Dr. Nathalie Picarelli
Economist
World Bank
price, could shared and on-demand
mobility help cover the last mile
between public transport stations and
commuters’ final destination? Could
they effectively complement mass
transit to make a car-free lifestyle
more viable, and progressively reduce
demand for privately-owned vehicles?
Early evidence suggests that many
users already rely on a combination of
public transport and ride-hailing to
complete their journey. In Sao Paulo,
the Brazilian-born e-hailing app 99
estimates that 13% of all its trips
start or finish at a metro station. In
Rio de Janeiro, this figure is as high
as 24%.
How can we tap into the synergies
between ride-hailing and public
transit in order to tackle congestion
and
improve
the
commuting
experience in mega-cities like Sao
Paulo? To answer this, the World
Urban Transport Infrastructure | November 2018