Seminar David Palma

David Palma (University of Leeds) will present his paper “Citizens’ preferences for urban transport to improve social mobility and women's comfort: Identifying low-cost interventions for public transport in a resource-constraint environment” (joint with Ajaz Ahmed, Social Protection Resource Centre, Islamabad Pakistan).

The invited speaker is interested in a tenure-track job in the department (Area: Operations).

Abstract:

An affordable and efficient public transport system improves citizens’ access to economic opportunities and enables them to rise out of poverty and overcome social inequities. This creates an enabling environment for low-income and marginalised segments of society, thereby mitigating social exclusion and thus creating an inclusive society. Pakistan lacks an effective and affordable public transport system for its citizens, even in highly populated urban areas. While there is an urgent need for investment in public transport in Pakistan, the government has severe resource constraints and modern public transport systems are prohibitively expensive. Using choice modelling and a stated choice surveys, this study investigates citizens’ preferences for different attributes of public transport in three major cities in Pakistan. The study aims to inform the design of low-cost interventions to improve citizens’ access to and use of public transport. The results reveal that (i) small subsidies to decrease the fare of bus modes are unlikely to significantly foster demand, as travellers seem to value improvements in service quality over price reductions; (ii) transfers are strongly disliked by travellers, making the potential implementation of trunk-feeder systems undesirable in large Pakistani cities; (iii) smaller changes such as providing Wi-Fi and reserved seats for women in buses could lead to large increases in bus market share (up to 8%); (iv) Finally, providing reserved women-only seats in buses could significantly boost women mobility, though larger societal implications should also be considered.