Abstract

Part of the The Urban Book Series book series (UBS)

Abstract

Urban public transport services offer mobility opportunities to people who do not have a private car or other means of travel. This crucial public service can, therefore, only fulfil its mission if it is equitably available throughout the city and for all populations, and if it functions efficiently. This research aims to test the hypothesis that the problem of inequalities in access to public transport services in Algiers is mainly due to a bad spatial configuration of the bus network and an unbalanced distribution of the public transport offer. A methodological approach that combines data analysis by classification and geospatial analysis is used by the author. The analyses showed that there is an inequality in the spatial distribution of the supply of the public transport network combined with a poorer performance of the public transport system in the peripheral municipalities, where there is a lack of basic infrastructure, which increases the risk of exclusion of the poorest populations. The Algiers Urban Transport Authority should take passengers’ expectations into account in the decision-making process, as well as in the establishment of transport plans and in the definition of quality indicator requirements for bus service operators eligible for the activity. In addition, information and communication technologies can be used to optimize the efficiency of the public transport system by making travel information readily available and accessible to users.

Keywords
Algiers,
Bus network performance,
Spatial inequality,

Keywords