Welcome to your sixth issue of Pop Transport, the fortnightly newsletter of the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation.
Informal transportation is very, very popular (widespread, and for the people).
It overwhelmingly dominates the rapidly growing towns and cities of the Global South. It moves billions and employs millions of people around the world.
That’s why we call this newsletter “Pop Transport.”
In this issue, we’ll:
Introduce you to the newest, distinguished person to join our Board of Advisors;
Share the video of our webinar on electric three-wheelers in India;
Share a favorite quote from James C. Scott;
Share the audio of NewCities’ ThreeSixtyCity podcast, featuring our very own Andrea San Gil Leòn; and,
Share Flone Initiative’s toolkit on gender sensitive mini-bus services and infrastructure for African Cities; and,
We say “thank you” and “see you later” to GPIT’s first ever intern, Nicolás.
Aishwarya Raman joins GPIT Board of Advisors
We’ve been introducing you to the members of our Board of Advisors over the last few issues so you might be tired of hearing us say “we are so proud to announce.” But, we really are so proud to announce each distinguished person who accepts our invitation to be an Advisor.
So…
We are proud to announce that Aishwarya Raman, Head of Research at Ola Mobility Institute, has joined our Board. We are particularly excited to have Aishwarya because she not only leads very important research into informal transportation, she has also actually run a startup focused on women and on three-wheelers in India.
She is the founder and ex-CEO of AutoRaja, one of South India’s earliest and largest book an-auto services, and has mentored multiple startups. She’s also credited with starting India’s first all-women auto-rickshaw fleet, AutoRani.
The Ola Mobility Institute (OMI) is Ola’s policy research and social innovation think tank. Aishwarya is a post-graduate in Sociology from the University of Oxford and has close to a decade of professional experience.
Aishwarya is passionate about studying the interplay of technology and society. At OMI, she manages a team of economists, sociologists, and urban planners, conducts research in areas such as urban mobility, electric mobility, energy, gender and safety, accessibility and inclusion, and the future of work.
Aishwarya is also a Salzburg Global Fellow taking part in the Japan-India Transformative Technology Network, and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Urban Mobility Transitions.
Welcome, Aishwarya!
The electrifying transformation of informal transportation in India
In case you missed it or if you just want to see it again, you can catch our TUMIVolt Charging Station webinar on YouTube.
India is the world’s largest three-wheeler market. In 2020, India’s ICE three-wheeler market was estimated at more than USD 600 million. Over 15 million three-wheelers serve as the most important shared / public transport mode to millions of citizens in Indian cities. Three-wheelers not only offer convenient first / last mile connectivity in cities with metros/buses, but also as a primary transport option in rural areas, allowing people to commute to bus-stops or train-stations and highways. With their easy maneuverability and high fuel efficiency three-wheelers are not just serving as passenger carriers but also as one of the main urban freight carriers in Indian cities.
We had a great conversation with Sonal Shah and Cedrick Tandong. (You can jump straight to the framing slides from GPIT at 8.24.)
We’ll get you the transcript soon. Our thanks to GIZ and TUMI and Agile City Partners for co-producing the event.
Back Reads
If you have time to do some back reading, here are a some important pieces:
Inside India’s Messy Electric Vehicle Revolution from August 2019, New York Times.
A million electric rickshaws sprang up out of nowhere and are now being used by 60 million people a day. The government and vehicle makers are struggling to catch up.
India’s Rickshaw Revolution Leaves China in the Dust from October 2018, Bloomberg.
An electric-vehicle revolution is gaining ground in India, and it has nothing to do with cars…The South Asian nation is home to about 1.5 million battery-powered, three-wheeled rickshaws – a fleet bigger than the total number of electric passenger cars sold in China since 2011.
If you want to learn more about India’s electric mobility programs, specially on how the country is mobilizing its industrial sector, read Tracking India’s Industrial Evolution with Electric Mobility from WRI India.
WRI India has identified more than 100 strategic moves made in the Electric Vehicle (EV) industry between 2017 and 2020. Applying a multi-case research methodology, we further analyzed 31 of these strategic moves using the Four-Dimensional Framework of Competitive Advantage1. Our goal was to observe how firms are choosing to become more competitive as they race to enter the global EV value chain.We posit that policymakers can play a key role in driving competition, and thereby reap the rewards of economic development – including technological leadership, active participation in the global value chain and developing human capital and resource efficiency.
We like this quote from Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott
Formal order, to be more explicit, is always and to some considerable degree parasitic on informal processes, which the formal scheme does not recognize, without which it could not exist, and which it alone cannot create or maintain.
Informal Transportation on ThreeSixtyCity
Our very own Andrea San Gil Leòn joined Greg Lindsay on NewCities’ newest podcast, ThreeSixtyCity. Click the link below.
THREESIXTYCITY - EPISODE 15 - APR 9, 2021
They go by many names: ojeks; boda bodas; trikes; tuktuks; matatus; jeepneys — the two-, three-, and four-wheeled vehicles that ferry millions of people across the Global South daily. A decade ago, they were villainized as a scourged to be stamped out; today, they’re being monetized by billion-dollar startups such as Grab and Ojek. But the larger task remains — elevating so-called “informal” transport to a full-partner in urban mobility, and making these modes clean, safe, and sustainable.
Agile City Partners’ Andrea San Gil Leon joins us to discuss her work advising the government of Costa Rica and others on recognizing the power of pop transport.
Women and Informal Transportation
We’re big fans of the Flone Initiative, “a women-led organization, working towards the creation of safe, sustainable and accessible public transportation spaces for women and vulnerable groups in Africa, by influencing behavioral change, generating knowledge and movement-building.”
Together with UN-Habitat, they developed the Gender Sensitive Mini-Bus Services and Transport Infrastructure for African Cities: A Practical Toolkit.
This Toolkit provides minimum standard guidelines and practical tools for creating safer and more accessible public transportation systems for women in African cities. It aims at showing public transport operators how to improve their services for women and at local and national government authorities. UN-Habitat and the Flone Initiative developed the Toolkit based on the research conducted in Nairobi, Kenya, showing that women have (different) travel patterns from men and often experience sexual harassment in the streets or on public transport.
Thank you, Nicolás!
We say “thank you” and “see you later, to our first ever intern Nicolás Morales.
Nicolás is in his final year as an Environmental Engineering student in San Carlos, Costa Rica. He is working on his dissertation focused on incorporating climate adaptation criteria to land planning instruments for local governments in Costa Rica.
He was part of our team for the last three months. He played an essential role in helping us organize our Central American Datathon. He put together our almost-ready-to-be-published Encyclopedia of Informal Transportation in Central America, and found interesting content for us to share with you here in Pop Transport.
We're so thankful for his amazing work and we’re sure that he'll continue to contribute towards transforming cities and fighting the climate crisis wherever life takes him next!
Good luck, Nicolás!
That’s it for this week. Do leave us a comment.
And if you’re enjoying Pop Transport, go ahead and share.
Pop Transport is a fortnightly newsletter of the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation. The Partnership works hand-in-hand with informal urban transportation systems of the Global South to advance innovation, improve services, and change business models. By leveraging new technology and innovative policies, we believe these informal networks can confront climate change and make our cities work for everyone.
The Global Partnership for Informal Transportation is a project of NewCities, initiated by Agile City Partners, and, supported by CoMotion Inc.
Our Strategic Partners include: WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and the Shared-Use Mobility Center.
Email us at contact@newcities.org if you are interested in becoming a partner. (Make sure to include “GPIT” in the subject line.)