Roger Behrens is a Professor in the University of Cape Town’s Department of Civil Engineering. He is Director of the Centre for Transport Studies. He graduated with a Master Degree in City and Regional Planning from UCT in 1991, and with a PhD degree in 2002. His current research activities relate to: the regulation and improvement of informal public transport services, and their integration with scheduled formal services; analysis of the dynamics of changing travel behaviour, and the implications this has for the management of travel demand; and the identification of urban form preconditions for effective and viable public transport networks.
Sessions
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June 05: Informal transport: Everything you need to know and never dared to ask
Paratransit political economies
We need informal transport/paratransit data on the conventional metrics of public transport service (i.e. service spans, service headways, network coverage, fares, etc.). But we cannot intervene successfully in the sector if we do not know: who the agents in the paratransit ‘ecosystem’ are, and what power they have to halt reforms if their interests are not met; how paratransit operators are organised collectively, and where decision-making power lies; and how paratransit service provision is regulated (by public authorities) and self-regulated (by operator associations).
