Paratransit & Popular Transport Day 2025
Decarbonization, informal transport electrification, and this year's meet-and-greets.
Hello and happy new year, pop transport folks! We are glad to have you back in this new edition of events, updates, and tools for popular transport. Let’s kick off 2025 with an insightful new resource on electrification:
Minibus Taxi Scheduling and Electrification
The Journal of Transport Geography’s recent publication Investigating Scheduling of Minibus Taxis in South Africa's Eventual Electric Paratransit proposes a heuristic scheduling algorithm to support South Africa's transition to electric minibus taxis, addressing challenges like mixed fleets, charging infrastructure optimization, and load shedding. By minimizing vehicles, charging stations, and trip delays, the approach ensures operational efficiency without compromising livelihoods. This research is a critical step toward equitable electrification of minibus based popular transport systems.
3rd Annual Paratransit/Popular Transportation Day
Date: Thursday, March 13, 2025
Location: World Bank HQ, Washington, D.C.
Join us for the 3rd edition of Paratransit/Popular Transportation Day (P/PTD), a one-day mini-conference taking place immediately after Transforming Transportation 2025 (TT25). This event will be a space to continue conversation on what we’re learning about popular transport around the world, how to leverage investment for the sector and what we need to do to continue our mission of more recognition, support, integration and investment in these essential services.
This year’s event centers on the theme: “Pathway Partners: Engaging Paratransit/Popular Transportation as Assets to Building Sustainable Transportation.” The focus will be on showcasing how popular transport systems can serve as critical assets in creating more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban transport networks.
Objectives and Focus Areas
The 3rd P/PTD aims to advance the understanding, integration, and improvement of popular transport systems while exploring their critical role in sustainable transportation. Through four key themes, the event will:
Practice: Showcase global progress in integrating paratransit/popular transport with city and metropolitan systems.
People: Highlight the vital contributions of workers and owner-drivers and fostering trust between governments and operators.
Resources: Explore innovative financing mechanisms from MDBs, IFIs, philanthropies, and other global funding sources.
Research: Present cutting-edge tools and knowledge that inform better policy and planning decisions.
By focusing on these areas, the event aims to share lessons learned from the implementation of real-world policies and projects across the globe; strengthen networks dedicated to integrating paratransit into policy, planning, and investments; unlock global finance for paratransit systems; and lay the foundation for greater collaboration with the driver-owners and workers of the micro- and small-enterprises that operate these vital systems.
Important Participation Details
Attendance to P/PTD is free, but space is limited. Please note that the organizers will not provide travel assistance, stipends, or visa support. Additionally, registering for P/PTD does not include access to TT25, and vice versa; separate registrations are required for each event.
Event Organizers
The event is co-organized by the Africa Transport Policy Program (SSATP); the Center for Sustainable Urban Development (CSUD) at Columbia’s Climate School; Climate Champions; Digital Transport for Africa (DT4A); the Global Network for Popular Transportation (GNPT); the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITWF); the Partnership for Research in Informal and Shared Mobility (PRISM); the Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC); Transport for Cairo (TfC); the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF); the World Bank; and the World Resources Institute (WRI) Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.
Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with a dynamic community of policymakers, practitioners, and thought leaders working to shape the future of popular transport. Click here to register for P/PTD.
New Paratransit Decarbonization Community of Practice hosted by Mobilise Your City
We're excited to share that we have joined Mobilise Your City and other popular transport network partners such as CODATU, Despacio, GIZ, ITDP, EBRD, and the Wuppertal Institute, in a new community of practice on decarbonizing the popular transport sector. In just a few meetings, we had a "data show and tell" and are working together to consolidate and improve existing data that can help us better understand the decarbonization potential for the popular transport sector and provide guidance and tools to make changes happen!
This work is aligned with several of GNPT's strategic pathways, aiming to generate actionable insights to inform key stakeholders about the sector’s contributions and needs, and to develop standardized tools for tracking and reporting emissions within popular transportation, creating accountability and encouraging cleaner operations. Interested in our strategic pathways? You can check them out here:
Go check MYC’s Paratransit Decarbonisation policy brief highlighting the urgent need for paratransit decarbonisation and presenting a comprehensive roadmap using the EASI Framework.
First Meet-and-Greet of the New Year
Our very first meet-and-greet of 2025 will be held on the 13th of February, tackling the topic of the economics in popular transport! These year, our Meet and Greets are supported by VREF, and will feature the research being done in the Partnership for Informal and Shared Mobility (PRISM), in addition to on-the-ground insights from other members of our network. This year our goal is cross pollination!
During this Meet and Greet, we will also be launching a series of Popular Transport Explainers on the role of two and three wheelers in cities in Global South we have been developing jointly with Uber. Colleagues from the Mumbai Living Lab authored our first explainer on Economics of Popular Transportation, which will be available on our website starting February 13th!
Save the date and don’t miss this in-depth discussion featuring PRISM Consortium Mumbai Living Lab and other experts on the field talking about popular transport economics, operations, livelihoods, business models, etc.
In the final meet-and-greet of 2024, we led a discussion with the Bangkok Living Lab also part of PRISM, on advancing the sustainability of popular transport systems through electrification. The session focused on transitioning Thailand’s motorcycle taxis from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs), emphasizing the need to overcome regulatory barriers, gather comprehensive data, and engage diverse stakeholders such as drivers, policymakers, and businesses. Speakers highlighted the environmental and public health benefits of electrification and addressed the challenges posed by outdated regulations and motorcycle taxis’ evolving role in delivery services. The event concluded with a commitment to continued collaboration and knowledge-sharing in 2025 to further sustainable urban mobility.
And last but not least, make sure to keep up with all of our meet-and-greets this year with our 2025 schedule. We’ll be announcing the exact date of each webinar here and on our social media, so make sure to follow us and keep an eye out for these events!
That is it for this month! As always, send us information about happenings, new data, and cool insights to info.gnpt@sharedusemobilitycenter.org.
Take care!
Interested in more? If you haven’t done so, join our LinkedIn Group and join the conversation! Also, let us know about events or updates in our sector.
Thank you!
Pop Transport is the newsletter of the Global Network for Popular Transportation, a global network of researchers, consultants, advocates, companies, agencies, and institutions committed to changing how the world sees popular transportation.
The Global Network for Popular Transportation is a project of the Shared-Use Mobility Center, initiated by Agile City Partners.
The Global Network for Popular Transportation works to ensure that:
Cities, countries, international development agencies, and banks recognize popular transportation as a valid, essential, and important service.
All popular transportation modes are integrated into urban, transport, social, economic, and climate policy and planning efforts.
The key sectors in popular transportation are recognized and participate as equal partners in co-creating accessible, equitable, and sustainable cities. These sectors include workers, entrepreneurs, micro-, small-, and medium enterprises, and small-scale investors.
The world takes an asset-based framework to understanding popular transportation, moving away from simplistic and ineffective approaches focused solely on transportation efficiency to an approach that prioritizes valuing the environment, advancing equity, and empowering people and communities