1. Scope and objectives

A social analysis of urban transport must evolve around actual mobility and accessibility conditions, their distribution among social groups and classes, how road space is used and what sort of externalities are generated and experienced. On general grounds, mobility and accessibility are constrained by disposable income, gender and age, the individual level of education and employment condition, the family division of tasks and the location of working sites and urban services. They are also affected by the supply of sidewalks, roads and transport means, especially in respect to the share of public and private ones. In addition actual mobility and accessibility to urban space and services may be severely affected by the mentioned structural changes, deepening still further inequity, and social and environmental unsustainability in cities of developing countries.

The paper first summarizes the main structural factors and tensions that are currently challenging large urban areas in developing countries. Secondly, it analyses how such factors and tensions are related to actual urban transport conditions, emphasizing mobility, accessibility, social and equity issues. Four types of tensions are scrutinized: Political tensions (institutional conflicts at the metropolitan level, institutional conflicts at the local level; class and group interests in respect to transport policies); Transport supply tensions (financing of transport infrastructure; deregulation and/or privatization of public transport services and related conflicts; Illegal public transport and the informal sector; mobility and accessibility); Transport economic tensions (transport expenses and family income); Equity tensions (production of externalities: the use of road space, pollution, accidents). Thirdly, the paper analyses the tendencies that may be related to current tensions and to the patterns of urban transport supply and use. Forth, it discusses the obstacles to be faced and the actions that may be adopted to minimize or overcome current transport-related tensions and problems.
 

2. Which conditions do we face?
Despite large differences among specific conditions, developing country cities may be said to present some similarities. These are:

Infrastructure supply: With sidewalks, there is often a generalised shortage of good infrastructure and in many places people have to use carriageways in dangerous conditions. With roads, provision may vary from 6 percent (Calcutta) of urbanised area to 21 percent (São Paulo), however actual traffic conditions depend on social and economic conditions of people, traffic mix and surface type. Roads with inadequate surfaces and lack of drainage systems are common. Especially in central areas, roads use to be as narrow as 7 meters and in peripheral areas alleys have to be used for all traffic.

Vehicle supply: In addition to walking, people in developing countries use a wide array of vehicles. Bicycles appear as the most important non-motorised mode and bicycle-like vehicles are extensively used in Asia and Africa, for both the transport of both people and goods. Motorised transport is less accessible, considering the costs of purchasing, maintaining and operating. Motorcycles are already a common means of transport in Asia and some parts of Africa and cars are still limited to the wealthy sectors of society, although in high proportions in countries such as South Korea, Thailand, Brazil and Mexico. Trucks and buses are less numerous than private vehicles although in the latter case they represent a much greater passenger-carrying capacity: there is a wide range of vehicles, ranging from 4-5 seats to 50 seats.

Public transport supply: The bus and all its variations is by far the most common public mode of transport, regardless of the region. There are cities with exclusive public transport supply (such as in China), cities with exclusively private supply (medium cities in most countries) and cities with mixed public and private supply (most of the large cities). Public transport may be provided by individuals or by small, medium or large firms, using several types of vehicles. The most common pattern of private supply organisation is the cooperative of operators, gathering individuals and their buses in bus corridors across the city. In some cases the entry of new operators is free, in others only formally free. The number of public transport buses may range from a couple of thousands � in the case of cities with large buses such as São Paulo and Delhi � to more than a hundred thousand (Mexico City), when small and middle sized vehicles are used. In face of conflicts related to fare prices, supply is therefore permanently subject to instability, affecting both public and regulated private operators. One of its most remarkable effects is the tendency to the dilapidation of the fleet, with direct impacts on passengers' comfort and safety as well as on the availability of vehicles for daily operation.

Mobility and modal split: Mobility is generally low due to mostly low incomes: the average is about 1-1.5 trips per person, per day, as compared to 3 trips for high income societies. Female mobility is always lower than male�s, reflecting the family division of tasks. Modal split present large variations and three main groups may be devised: cities with predominantly non-motorised trips (such as Bamako, Bobo Doioulasso, Beijing, Dakar, Hanoi, Jaipur, La Habana, Ouagadougou and Yaoundé), cities where public transport responds for the majority of trips (such as Abdijan, Bouake, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Lagos, Pretoria and Santiago) and cities were motorised private modes play an important role (such as Caracas, Hanoi, Ouagadougou, and São Paulo). In this respect, cities may also be classified according to the type of private motorised transport they have: Hanoi, Lagos and Ouagadougou rely mainly on motorcycles, while in Buenos Aires, Caracas, São Paulo and Pretoria cars play a predominant role. The use of a mode is highly constrained by income and gender: motorised means are used more extensively by higher income strata and by men (irrespective of income). If just motorised trips are analysed, most cities have more than 50 per cent of trips made by public transport. Few have trains and metros and the bus is the main mode.
 

Table 1:    Mobility and income, São Paulo metropolitan area, 1997
 

Family monthly income (R$)	Trips/person/day
< 250	1.16
250 � 500	1.47
500 � 1000	1.76
1000 � 1800	2.07
1800 � 3600	2.34
> 3600	2.64
Average	1.87

Ref: CMSP, 1998
 

Table 2:    Mobility and gender, several cities
 

City	Trips/day
	Men	Women
Delhi (India)1, 1990	1,13	1,08
Bamako (Mali)2	3,7	2,4
Hanoi (Vietnam)3, 1995	2,3	2,4
Oagadougou (Burkina Falso)4	4,2	3,1
São Paulo (Brazil)5, 1997	2,0	1,7

(1) Sharma and Gupta, 1998; (2) Diaz Olvera et coll, 1997; (3) Cusset, 1997
(4) Cusset and Sirpe, 1994; (5) CMSP, 1998.
 

Trip purposes: Trip purposes vary according to several social, cultural and economic factors, however work and school seem to be the universal single most important purposes, regardless of geography and wealth and corresponding to about 70% of all trips.

Accessibility: With motorised modes, total travel time between origin and destination varies markedly, depending on the access to each mode and the spatial distribution of activities, and may reach a 1:4 ratio between motorcycle and train trips (table 3). Trips by private modes always take much less time than that of public modes and non-motorised trips correspond to the lowest travel times (in face of people�s physical limitations). Bus speeds usually fall in the 10 - 20 km/h range, due both to the stop-run operation and to increasing congestion, and average door-to-door travel time may be 50 percent higher than that of the car. Automobile speeds depend heavily on road conditions and traffic mix, varying from values as high as 45 km/h (Brasilia) to 8 -10 km/h (Bangkok). Motorcycle speeds are presumably higher, once they have more freedom to percolate through stationary vehicles. Access walking time to vehicles is an important measure of attractiveness. In the case of autos such time is low � around a few minutes � once many owners have private spaces at home to park the car and once parking availability at the destination is also often high. Conversely, access time to buses is always higher, due to the spatial distribution of bus stops and the waiting time at the bus stop: walking and waiting times can be higher than 30 minutes, especially in peripheral areas. Transfer time is also an important part of the problem and up to 25 percent of users do not find services linking directly origin and destination..
 

Table 3: Door-to-door travel times, all modes, São Paulo,1997
 

Mode	Door-to-door  travel time (min)
Train	93
Subway	77
Bus	56
Minibus(1)	37
Auto	28
Taxi (2)	26
Motorcycle	25
Bike	23
Foot	15

(1) illegal paratransit; (2) individual use only
Ref: CMSP, 1998
 

Comfort: Overcrowded vehicles are a daily reality in almost every developing country and is several cities buses carry up to 2,000 passengers a day, implying high internal load and discomfort. Conventional maximum allowable densities (5 to 6 passengers per m²) are frequently surpassed.

Expenses with transport: Costs to own and use a non-motorised vehicle are usually low, while motorcycles and cars are much more expensive. Absolute expenses with transport increase with income, as higher income families are more mobile and use faster or more expensive modes. However, the participation of these expenses in total family income tends to decrease with increasing wealth: while very low income families may spend as much as 40 percent of their total income, wealthy families may expend just 10 percent of total inputs.
 

Table 4: Absolute and relative expenses with transport by income level, São Paulo, 1997

Income (R$/month)	Absolute expenses (R$/month)			Relative expenses (% of income)
	Public1	Private2	Total
0 � 250	14.1	34.6	48.8	39.0
250 � 500	25.7	60.0	85.6	22.8
500 � 1,000	35.1	112.0	147.1	19.6
1,000 � 1,800	44.0	203.6	247.6	17.7
1,800 � 3,600	37.9	327.7	365.6	13.5
> 3,600	27.6	492.2	519.8	9.6

1. all modes; considering that 50 per cent of users receive travel voucher from employers; (2) automobile
2. Ref: CMSP, 1998

Environmental problems: Air pollution has already reached extremely high levels in several large cities, exceeding the recommended limits by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Cities differ both in the nature of air pollution problem and in the excess pollution produced, however in most cases transport is the main source of pollution. The major problem is that most pollutants are related to serious respiratory diseases and to several forms of cancer. One of the most harmful pollutant at the local level is the Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) and available data shows that SPM concentration is much higher in large cities of the developing world as compared to those in developed cities (table 7).

Table 5: Traffic fatalities and rates, selected countries
 

Country	Fatalities/ Year	Fatalities/ 10,000 veh a
Developed
USA, 19951	41,798	3
France, 19842	11,685	6
Germany, 19842	10,199	4
Japan, 19842	9,262	2
Developing
Índia, 19963	69,800	21
China, 19941	66,322	82
Brazil, 19954	27,886	11
South Korea, 19955	10,323	12
South Africa, 19926	10,142	18
Nigeria, 19807	8,936	141
Bangladesh, 19928	2,317	61

Ref: (1) Pucher, 1999; (2) OECD, 1986; (3) Mohan, 1999; (4); Denatran, 1996; (5) Lee, 1998 (6) Wise, 1994; (7) Barrett, 1988; (8) Quium, 1995 (a) Approximate values;
 

Table 6: Pedestrian fatalities as a percentage of total traffic fatalities, several regions.
 

Region	Pedestrian fatalities (% of total)
Europe/USA	20
Latin America	60
Africa	45
Middle East	51
Asia	42

Ref: Guitink and Flora, 1995, using data summarised by the World Bank.
 

Table 7: Average SPM concentration, cities in developing and developed countries

Developed countries			Developing countries
Country	City	SPMa	Country	City	SPMa
Australia	Sidney	138	China	Beijing	395
Belgium	Brussels	24		Shanghai	240
Canada	Montreal	59	Ghana	Accra	150
	Toronto	62	India	Calcutta	374
Finland	Helsink	87		Delhi	464
Germany	Frankfurt	36	Indonesia	Jakarta	175
Japan	Tokyio	60	Iran	Tehran	241
	Osaka	47	Malasya	K Lumpur	136
USA	Chicago	79	Pakistan	Lahore	405
	Houston	48	Thailand	Bangkok	198
	New York	62	Venezuela	Caracas	78

1. in kg/m³; average for commercial and industrial areas (centre or suburban); ref: UN, 1996

The use of the road space: The use of the space is the key element for analysing the equity component of urban transport. The space occupied by a person while using the public road is dependent on the transport mode, its speed while moving and the time it remains parked, in the case of a vehicle. When the space needed for parking and circulating is compared for four modes (train, bus, car and bike), it can be seen that the most famine is the automobile, consuming 30 times more area than a bus and about five times that of a two-wheeler (Vivier, 1999). When comprehensive, city-wide surveys are performed people using automobiles � the minority � take from 70 to 80 per cent of road space (Brazilian cities). When average vehicle occupancy is considered, people using automobiles are found to be consuming from seven to 28 times the area used by those travelling by bus (IPEA/ANTP, 1998). When the daily space consumption of families (space budget) is computed for several income levels and transport modes, the ratio between the lowest and the highest income levels is almost 1:4 in the case of São Paulo (CMSP, 1998). When linear distances are multiplied by the specific personal space correspondent to each motorised mode the ratio between the lowest and the highest income levels increases to 1:9 (figure 1). The most important conclusion for policy purposes is that road public assets are not equally distributed among people and that treating road investments as democratic and �equitable� is a myth. This is one of the most powerful and important myths behind automobile supporting policies.

Figure 1: Daily dynamic family space budgets and income, São Paulo, 1997
Ref: CMSP, 1998

Barrier effect and segregation: Social relations may be severely affected by traffic, once people are forced to reorganise their travelling behaviour to adapt to new conditions. Main consequences are the reduction in social interaction and in the use of public spaces (Appleyard, 1981) and the need to define strategies for reducing the risk of accidents (Hillman, 1988). Such effect is labelled �the barrier effect� (traffic severance). Children and youngsters are especially affected by such externality while socialising. Trucks and buses, for their dimensions and engine power, often cause large nuisances and building vibration, however the most pervasive negative influences are caused by automobiles, in face of their number and their need to conform space to survive.
 

Table 8: Summary of current transport and traffic conditions in developing countries

Factor or variable	Current conditions
Infrastructure supply	Absolute lacking or poor supply of sidewalks Low quality roads  Few special treatment for NMT or buses
Vehicle supply	High availability of bicycles Low to medium supply of public transport vehicles High availability of private motorised transport for medium to high income groups
Mobility and transport use	Low average individual mobility Large variation on modal split, with a predominance of non-motorised and public transport means
Trips purposes	Most trips made for work and school purposes
Accessibility	Large variation in door-to-door travel times among modes Private transport ever faster than public transport Low spatial supply of public transport High walking and waiting times to access public transport Poor integration of public transport services
Comfort	Low quality of pedestrian and non-motorised trips Frequent overcrowding of public transport vehicles Medium to high quality in private motorised trips
Expenses	Low income groups spend a high percentage of earnings with transport High income groups spend lower shares of their earnings
Traffic safety	High accident figures and rates The most vulnerable (pedestrians and NMT users) are the most damaged
The use of roads	High income people use much more road space per day
Environment	High pollutant concentration in large cities

3. Understanding current tensions
Transport related tensions may be better understood by analysing them according to several dimensions described below. While the first eight dimensions reveal how policies are formulated and implemented, the last two reveal the actual results of such policies.

The structural dimension
Structural factors are those that characterise the process of economic and social development in developing countries. Although profoundly impacting transport conditions, solutions to minimise or overcome such structural factors fall outside transport policies themselves.

It is well know that income disparities in developing countries are enormous, with most of wealth concentrated in 5 to 15 per cent of people, which usually concentrate 50 per cent of national income, while the lower 50 per cent of people concentrate just 5 to15 per cent. In 1990, between a fifth and a quart of the world�s population still lived in poverty, without adequate food, clothing and shelter. More than 90 percent of these lived in the developing countries. Between 1980 and 1991 annual average change in per capita income was negative for the regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, North Africa, Latin a America and the Caribbean (N�Dow, 1997). Asia had the higher quantity of poor people however the fastest growth in urban poverty was occurring in Africa (Barry and Kawas, 1997). Apart from such unbalanced wealth, unemployment and sub-employment in highly unstable informal activities is already high and increasing in most places.

Between 1950 and 1990, urban population as part of total population increased from 41.6 to 71.4 percent in the Latin American and the Caribbean Region. In Asia, urban population share between 1950 and 1990 varied from 11 to 26.2 percent in China and from 12.4 to 30.6 percent in Indonesia. In Africa, similar variations were 10.1 to 35.2 percent in Nigeria and 31.9 to 43.9 percent in Egypt. Not a single country in Asia, Latin America and Africa escaped an increase in its urban population share in the period.

Such immense and continuing migration process is caused by several factors, among them the most important seem to be persistent poverty and enormous regional economic imbalances, that attract or force people to move to cities. Especially since the 80�s, Sub-Saharan African cities experienced intense urban growth due to rural migration related to economic crisis, leading to severe urban problems of housing shortage, environmental degradation, unemployment and infrastructural deficiencies (Halfani,1996). As several counterpart cities in other world regions, African cities appear to be unable to accommodate such growth and their ecological sustainability is in jeopardy. With Arab countries, urban population was small in the 50�s � about 30 to 40 percent in most cases � and increased rapidly in the 70�s, when most countries reached urbanisation levels above 60 percent. Main consequences are a strong concentration of the population in central cities � up to 50 percent of country�s population in the case of Amman, Jordan � lack of adequate housing and infrastructure, overcrowding, the separation of families and the depletion of local labour force, attracted by foreign opportunities. An important aspect is that in several cities almost 90 percent of the people was comprised of migrants, with few rights and subject to spatially based ethnic segregation: �ethnic ghettos became increasingly institutionalised...(and ) .....develop their own social and commercial services� (Abu-Lughod, 1996:201)

Some Asian countries encounter similar processes. In Indonesia, the rural-based production system related to the geographical division of the country in more than 3,000 islands has been changing towards an urban job market: from 1971 to 1990, urban population increased more than five per cent a year, moving from 17.2 to 30.9 per cent of total population, while employment in the service sector quadrupled, reaching the 71.6 per cent level of total employment (with the informal sector playing an important role) (Hugo, 1996). With India, although remaining a �rural� country, urban population increased from 17 per cent in 1951 to 25.7 per cent in 1991, when the country already had 296 cities with more than 100,000 people and 53 cities of over half a million people, where infrastructure and transport problems are severe (Mohan, 1996). In China, which is also still a �rural� country, recent economic changes have intensified rural-urban migration and �temporary migrants� (without official permission) were estimated to account in the late1980s from 10 to 30 per cent of total population in the largest towns; such intense migration caused severe problems to urban infrastructure and transport (Chen and Parish, 1996).

In Latin America, the process of �fast, massive, violent and non-reversible� urbanisation in the region (Henry and Figueroa, 1987) was followed by attempts to either support better life conditions in large towns through major investments or limit urban and demographic expansion. When considering urban transport issues, two particular features of such urban development process must be emphasised: the socio-spatial segregation and the different distribution of public services. With the former, large income and cultural differences led to the physical separation of wealthy groups, the middle classes and the poor, although mixed land use patterns may also be found. Of special interest is the long lasting process of occupation of peripheral areas by increasing numbers of poor migrants. With the latter, public investments were driven by the uneven distribution of political power, generating sharp differences in the availability of public goods such as schools, hospitals, roads and public transport, with direct impact on mobility and travel patterns.

Such physical transformation had definite impacts on transport demand. While pre automotive cities allowed for unlimited consumption of space by any person, modern cities begun to spread in larger areas, making it more difficult to rely on non motorised means of transport. Recently, as cities experienced an even more rapid growth of population, this has created average distances that cannot be walked or cycled. Therefore, the dependence on motorised transport means is inevitable in middle and large urban areas. This dependence requires that motorised transport be accessible, in physical and economic terms. Therefore, accessibility inequities were generated and a question remains about the possibility of restoring equity (Hagerstrand, 1987).

Additional characteristics such as land speculation and weakness of public planning controls further complicate the issue.

The political dimension
The political dimension reveals the failure of the political system, to ensure a democratic representation of the conflicting interests of social groups and classes in the formulation of transport and traffic policies. In addition to highly centralised States, where decisions are taken by a limited elite, most developing countries that have more open political regimes still suffer from a lack of adequate means of political representation. They are not institutionalised democracies, being instead fragile democracies, deeply biased in their decision-making processes. As shown for Brazil, besides being somehow controlled by economic and political elite, the decision making process favours the middle class sectors, which have direct and indirect means of influencing the policy outcomes. The main channel for this influence is provided by the technocracy and the bureaucracy, which are the middle class in power. Other important agents interfere, such as the highway and the automotive industry lobbies, and foreign related interests. As the main fuel for capitalist modernisation is social mobility, the middle sectors, who have the better historical conditions to benefit from the process, pursue this mobility fiercely. They see the automobile (and the motorcycle to a lesser extent) as one of the main tools for their efficient social reproduction: consequently, a symbiosis between middle classes and automobiles is formed. In addition, the economic role of the middle classes inside the capitalist economy places them in a political conservative position, that leads to reaction against apparent threats to their reproduction and reinforces the pursue of physical mobility as symbol of progress. Therefore, political and social conditions generate auto-oriented transport and traffic policies and �middle class cities� � where space is adapted to the middle class enacting the role of auto driver � mushroom everywhere. Consequently, other social groups in general and public transport users in particular are keep apart from the decision-making process, often subject to insufficient and unreliable transport supply. Social movements to support public transport are weakened by the fragile democratisation environment, by political repression and by public transport being just one among several deprivations experienced by poor people. Citizenship is poorly developed as people have defective knowledge on rights and duties and deficient means to influence State policies.

The ideological dimension
The ideological dimension reveals how deeply the automobile-adapted space has turned out to be a model to be pursued. Several views of the automobile � freedom, privacy, pleasure � are called upon to justify the planners� submission to the idea of the auto as a �human natural desire� and hence to the appropriateness of investing public money in constant road expansion. The socially and economically constrained auto demand is transformed into something �naturally humane� and the planners� role is then seeing as that of providing for peoples� desire as �free consumers�. Consequently urban, economic and transport policies promoted in developing countries have been shaping the contemporary space in a way that reinforces and induces the need for the car, while making non-motorised and alternate public transport means impractical. The submission of the most vulnerable users to an automobile space is enhanced by two factors: first, the weak development of citizenship which allows class differences to be translated into assumed differences in the right to occupy space; second, the persistent attempt to "blame the victim", by explaining accidents as �behaviour� faults by "irresponsible " pedestrians.

The investment in road expansion is supported by two instruments: first, the use of forecasting techniques to reproduce current conditions and the use, in appraising transport projects, of travel time benefit estimates based on differential wage rates between car and public transport users, therefore helping perpetuate current inequalities. The ideological dimension also operates when defining the supply of public transport services. Investments on roads are voiced as corresponding to the public interest while investments on public transport are often left to the market. Public transport provision is subject to permanent instability, with recurrent �cycles�, when public and private responsibility exchange positions. On the one side, the attempt to leave public transport to the market often leads to unsafe, uncomfortable and unreliable services, that may evolve to chaos. On the other side, public irresponsibility and corporativism may drive the publicly controlled system away from public interest. Final, current conditions are often very poor and inadequate all over the developing world.

The economic dimension
The economic dimension relates first to the fiscal crisis of the State, that hinders the support to efficient public transport systems and to distributive social policies. The crisis is partly genuine and partly misleading: large transport infrastructures, which rely on public investments, are becoming less feasible and subsidies to special groups are subject to increasing opposition; conversely, large amounts of public resources are used to support road infrastructure, based on the myth that they are democratic, equitable investments. Second, the crisis is related to the continued poverty of most of the population, which lowers general mobility, prevents people from having access to convenient public transport and limits access to space and to social services. Both problems have sustaining a continuous crisis in the supply of adequate public transport means and have consequently been supporting transport deregulation and privatisation proposals, which often do not bring the supposed benefits. However, transport conditions continue to be inadequate.

The institutional dimension
The institutional dimension relates to the division of power to command urban, transport and traffic policies. Besides being often opposed by dominant groups, the attempt to coordinate policy efforts face many obstacles. Few cities have agencies in charge of such duties. Technical resources are rare and badly trained. The nature of human resources opposes human sciences and technical sciences knowledge traditions. Technical requirements and time span for implementing actions for each area conflict with each other. Agencies overlap in their jurisdiction and conflicts around common issues are frequent. The problem is very serious in metropolitan areas such as Mexico City, Bangkok and São Paulo, where coordinated efforts are essential to ensure the implementation of large scale transport systems.

The technical dimension
The technical dimension is related to the commitment to traditional techniques generated in the developed countries without proper adjustment to developing countries� conditions and to the functionalistic approach to road use. Both transport planning and traffic management have been exercised under the protection of supposedly neutral and scientific approaches, and have been serving to generate (and propagate) an unequal and unfair distribution of accessibility. The rationale of the transport planning process is conservative, as it is directed to propose solutions to accommodate present tendencies in the future, without questioning the factors that shape transport demand; planning is reduced to a mere surrender to the results of forecasting exercises, as �natural outcomes of development and progress�. The lack of reliable data and the use of imported and/or simplified model procedures do not reproduce or simulate properly trip behaviour and its social and economic constraints. The use of the models characterised a �black-box� ethics, where only few experts could decide which data include and how to manage them. This sort of procedure was possible due both to the image of technology as symbol of modernity and the closed character of the political system, which maintained outside interference at very low levels; it was also fostered by the alliance among local expertise, local industry lobbies and foreign interests and pressures. Moreover, the consequences of these actions are virtually unaccountable: there is a need for waiting at least some years to evaluate the forecasting exercises, and there is always a possibility of explaining any deviation from forecasted figures making use of a set of social and economic �unexpected� changes. These problems, coupled with high rates of demographic, social and economic changes, led to forecasting activities that generated absurd results, supporting the provision of large road structures to be used by minorities, often with clear excess capacity. The imprisonment of planning into a peak-hour demand constraint for strict economic reasons harms especially the women�s travelling needs. Traffic management is highly influenced by the myth of neutrality, using technical tools that avoid social and political considerations, and pursuing the distribution of the circulation space supposedly in the benefit of �everybody.� It ends up providing a circulation space where the needs of the weakest roles (pedestrians, cyclists, bus passengers) are severely harmed to allow efficient conditions for enacting dominant roles attached to private transport, especially that of automobile driver. The most striking proofs of this irresponsible adaptation are the lack of proper sidewalks to perform the basic human role of pedestrian, the generation of high accident rates � especially those affecting the most vulnerable roles � and the lack of priority treatment to public transport.
 

The technological dimension
The technological dimension is related to the commitment to the automotive development model in a way that operates against non motorised and public transport systems. Walking has been neglected as a form of transport, local transport means have been constantly disregarded and even banned, buses have been treated as a market problem and railways have been dismantled, while the automobile � and motorcycles in several places � have received special attention as representing �legitimate� desires pertaining to society as a whole.

The technology to support walking does not exist. If something has to be selected as �democratically� distributed among developing countries this is for sure the unsafe, inconvenient and uncomfortable conditions of the role of pedestrian. There is no appropriate infrastructure � sidewalks and crossings � and in several cities pedestrians either have to use narrow, dangerous sidewalks or dispute space with all sorts of vehicles. Crossings are either non-existent or installed in a way that disregards pedestrian needs. Problems are worsened in the case of handicapped people. Pedestrians are treated as �second class citizens� by current transport and traffic planning and the result of such treatment is indelibly imprinted on space.

The technology to support non-motorised vehicles (NMV) such as the bicycle is also poorly developed, for few cities have adequate road treatment for them. The problem becomes critical where motorised transport is being increasingly supported, in face of the danger in using roads. Conditions to use NMV are also affected by unfavourable regulation, especially that concerning taxes, import duties, fuel taxes, licensing and financing. Such regulations have been used in many places to either restrain or ban NMV. Lack of integration facilities to public transport also deeply affects the convenience of using bicycles.

The technology to support buses � the most used public transport mode in developing countries � it is also poorly developed. Vehicle technology is appallingly poor: most vehicles are old private cars, adapted trucks with benches or low-quality microbuses. Even large, standard diesel buses such as those used in Brazil are mostly adapted vehicles. Bus terminals barely deserve such denomination, being physical points in space where vehicles and passengers try to find each other. Users have no information source on services other than their relatives and friends who have managed to find out routes and time tables or small, handmade plates hanging on the windshield of trucks and microbuses that are supposed to provide public transport. High quality priority treatment on roads is rare, confined to few bus corridors implemented in some large cities.

The operational dimension
The operational dimension relates either to the instability of keeping a regular supply of public transport and to the irregularity of guaranteeing good traffic conditions. Private supply of public transport is permanently subject to instability, due both to the market approach to the business and the never ending struggle between fare levels and expected revenues (Figueroa, 1991). Of special concern is the debate over public or private supply of public transport.

Negative consequences of public operation of transport have been extensively portrayed in the literature. Mismanagement leads to inefficiency, with service unreliability, crowed vehicles, passenger discomfort and underused equipment. Political interests and undue union pressures frequently lead to overstaffing, placing further pressures on costs. Disregard for market opportunities prevent the creation of new services. Inappropriate subsidisation channels resources to those less needed or to support corporate interests. The need to define fares and control private operators open space to collusion. And corruption may cause severe financial and credibility problems, often conducting companies to bankruptcy. Critical cases of extreme disruption and decay, such as those of large bus public companies in São Paulo and Mexico, are clear negative examples.

Informal transport has also been subjected to intense debate. Most of the time, the entrepreneurship of informal transit providers in developing countries is praised by developed countries� expertise, often with a bit of ecstasy. Reality, however, is very different. As extensively portrayed in the literature the fast increase in informal transport leads, in the first moment, to typical consequences such as savage competition and degenerating working conditions and, in a second step, to attempts of self-regulation that evolves into private monopolies. What the histories of informal public transport tell us is that when transport is seen as a market issue, strict market logic starts to operate, as in any normal business. Operators understand that they now have a private business that they have to run according to their feelings of what is convenient. Any public interference is seeing as a intrusion in the private business freedom. Any sort of tool is used to protect their interests, be it legal or illegal, pacific or violent. The immediate consequence is that those who are able to pay are served, those who cannot pay are not served. In Lomé (Mandon - Adolehoume,1994), a drivers� union was formed to control entry in the service provision and service dispatching at line terminals. In Santiago, after deregulation route associations began to block new entrants who refused to join the association (Figueroa, 1991). In Dakar, in face of savage competition, daily revenue became threatened and several �irregular� forms of behaviour start to be used, such as the bypass of terminal lines and the sudden change of itineraries. During peak hours, individual drivers concentrate on high-demand routes while in low demand areas users have to rely on public services (Mandon - Adolehoume,1994). Contrary to some expectations, deregulated markets often have a negative impact on fares, once operators try to keep revenue despite decreasing patronage. In Santiago, Chile, fares more than doubled (Koprich, 1994; Gómez-Ibáñez and Meyer, 1991). Decreasing revenues lead to poor vehicle maintenance and low fleet availability.

Service integration, vital to improve overall accessibility by users, seldom can be achieved, both for the nature of political conflicts and the quantity of private operators that have to negotiate policy decisions. Difficulties in cooperation extend to difficulties in promoting technological changes or enforce compliance to legal defined limits: In Jakarta, minibuses, which are significant contributors to pollution, are part of the protected cooperative sector, that threatens to block traffic anytime the government proposes to impose vehicle emission controls (Hook, 1998).

In addition, traffic management is highly skewed towards automobile traffic fluidity, paying little attention to the circulation needs of public transport users. Most cities have no priority treatment to these transport modes, a problem that is extremely harmful in the case of public transport in densely trafficked roads. Public agencies in charge of public transport have no monitoring systems and information on public transport performance is seen as a luxury. Conversely, efficient traffic management and monitoring techniques have already been developed to support automobile traffic and clearly ITS � intelligent transport systems � is included in the agenda of several large cities that intend to �modernise� their traffic for the wellbeing of all.

Box 1: The São Paulo bus nightmare

The operation of public transport by buses in São Paulo is an interesting example of how current tensions are evident. After WWII, a large bus public operator, the CMTC (City Public Transport Company was formed, dividing the market with several private firms. Until the end of the 70�s such joint public and private operation continued, however threatened by the permanent pressures brought by uncontrolled urban growth. Street car services were progressively dismantled until their termination in 1967 and CMTC gradually lost its market share, from 86 percent in 1949 to 21 percent in 1977, generating a privately operated market, with 66 firms and 6,420 large buses (CMTC had 2,000 buses). In 1977, city authorities defined 23 geographical service areas and the CBD, and issued a bidding process that induced private operators to form larger groups to operate such areas, while CMTC was granted exclusivity to operate circular lines in the CBD. The new system experienced stable conditions in the first years however started to have its efficiency lowered by profitability disparities among areas of operation, deficient enforcement and inflation-based tensions. Several private operators, especially those is less profitable areas, started cost-lowering practices that severely harmed level of service, reliability and accessibility. On the one side, deficient enforcement by the public sector and permanent conflicts around fare levels gradually placed the system in an unfavourable position, as one of the worse city problems according to public opinion tools; such conditions deteriorated even further by the neglect to define bus priority measures on city streets and by continuously investing in support of automobile use. On the other side, CMTC services, although benefiting from a long acquired positive view from users, started its cycle of disruption, brought by union and corporate pressures on employment and wages, overall inefficiency and corruption. Such decaying conditions were fostered by the 1991-94 action of the leftwing city government, in two ways. First, the permanent conflict between fare level and service supply was countervailed by paying services according to distances run, however without proper efficiency incentives and enforcement, generating increasing deficits, above what could be sustained by the city budget. In addition, local government was unable to cope with union pressures and allowed CMTC to keep pursuing the same destructive path. In 1994, with the city government in hands of neoliberal political forces who had campaigned against such conditions, CMTC was privatised and payment according to distance was changed to include few efficiency parameters. However, the ever prevailing abandonment of public transport remained, translated by the total neglect of priority measures for buses on streets and of any sort of quality-improving measures as well: demand continued to be seen as captive, independent of service quality. With the 1994 successful �Real� economic plan, inflation was gradually lowered, limiting pressures on public transport to the quality and accessibility issues. Sharp increases in automobile ownership and large investments on expressways and tunnels made by the new government fostered automobile use, causing the largest permanent traffic congestion in city�s history, further damaging bus reliability, whose afternoon peak-hour speed dropped to just 12 km/h (IPEA/ANTP, 1998). Meanwhile, global and regional structural economic changes, along with the evolution towards a tertiary economy, changed transport demand and opened new market niches to be exploited. Informal public transport, that had always played a minor role, started to be very attractive to individuals. Increasingly deficient enforcement, overall dissent with regular services and freeing of vans� import fostered the appearance of a powerful informal supply, that started to be supported directly by the media and the politicians, and indirectly by foreign van manufactures (mostly Asian), who gave financial and legal aid to the organisation of cooperatives of operators. Federal government pretended not seeing that vans were illegal to be used as public transport vehicles according to the traffic code. In 1999, vans were already spread throughout the country and in São Paulo alone it was estimated that more than 15,000 were in operation. The then existent 11,000 large buses gradually lost their patronage and unemployment in the formal sector started. It is estimated that vans captured about 20 percent of bus passengers, with an equivalent part shifting to automobiles. Inherent legal and economic conflicts led the new city government to start a reaction against illegal van transport, however surrounded by a extremely complex political environment.. Facing such reactions � although timid most of the time � van operators started a street war, in the very same way than that which occurred in several developing countries. They started blocking bus operations nearby bus stops and crisscrossing roads to capture passengers and the first fatal accidents occurred. Later, began to burn regular buses on streets, as reactions against enforcement measures. With the increasing number of informal suppliers, market conflicts started and route/area groups were formed, most of them including military policemen supposed to enforce illegal transport. Entry to the service started to be subjected to payment to such groups and armed people prevented new individuals from joining the market. The �savage� public transport supply cycle had already started. Bus burning and general violence escalated to a point when most people and also van users began supporting a stronger police action; local and regional governments managed to join efforts (previously hampered by political reasons) and severe measures were taken in the first months of the year 2000; most vans were forced out of streets, although a large group continued operation in peripheral areas; the attempt to reorganise the regulation environment � including new services with mini buses � were frustrated by the impeachment process against the city mayor (caused mainly by reasons other than public transport policy but has recently resumed, under extreme tensions.

The social dimension
The social dimension is the first one to capture the results of prevailing urban, transport and traffic policies in developing countries. It reveals several inequities:

Accessibility inequity: the most radical statement concerning inequality in access was made by Illich (1974): energy and equity are strongly related and the increase in energy provided by motorised transport has a profound negative impact on equity. Social and economic differences are heightened when people become �prisoners� of the transport industry. Mechanised transport allows persons to increase their speed and hence the destinations which can be reached; it dramatically increases the consumption of both space and the facilities demanded. Considering the unequal distribution of circulation means, the ability to consume space is highly biased towards those with access to private transport. The �radical monopoly of motorised transport� created a new form of inequality, giving the dominant classes another means of exercising power over space; accessibility became a scarce good, demanding the purchase of �public transport kilometres� (Illich, 1974, p45). The accessibility inequity involves several other inequities, concerning time, speed, comfort and cost.

Access time inequity concerns the differential time needed to get access to public transport means, as opposed to private motorised transport. It applies to walking time to the bus stop (or railway station), to waiting time and to transfer time between two public transport means. The actual times are related to three key features of transport supply: the spatial coverage of the network, the frequency of service and the availability of physical connections between different services. The latter implies transfer times, with further consequences with respect to service coordination, again with a special negative meaning for the users.

Speed inequity refers to the differential speed while travelling on vehicles (fluidity conditions). In non-congested cities, the difference between cars and buses can go up to 200 per cent, with buses travelling at 20 km/h and cars at 60 km/h. In more congested cities � as most large cities of contemporary developing countries � the mean speed of cars can still be the double or triple that of buses. Although part of the differences stem from the operational constraints of the bus, much comes from both automobile-related congestion and the inefficiency of bus operation, both related to disregard for the needs of the majority (the operational dimension). Comfort inequity relates mainly to conditions to use sidewalks for most of people and to the differential passenger density inside buses or automobiles and the possibility of travelling seated. The low quality of sidewalks or even the absolute lack of them severely harm most people, especially women and children, which enact the role of pedestrian more frequently. The actual conditions of public transport demonstrate that especially in peak-hours comfort is far from acceptable. This inequity is directly related to supply and economic constraints, related to peak and non-peak different demands. Cost inequity relates to people having no affordable transport means to use under minimum safety and comfort conditions. Absolute expenses with transport increase with income, as higher income families are more mobile and use faster or more expensive modes; however, low income families use to expend a much higher share of their inputs with transport than higher income ones.

The space appropriation inequity relates to different modes having highly distinct spatial consumption rates. On the one side, most people use roads in the role of pedestrians or cyclists and consume low quantities of space. Conversely, few use roads in the role of auto drivers and consume several times more space per person than those using standard buses or bicycles. On the other side, the provision of motorised circulation means is often left to the market: middle and upper income sectors purchase automobiles (or motorcycles) and lower income sectors have to rely on private bus operation, which is unreliable and imply often high access costs. Therefore, while middle and upper sectors can actually consume the circulation structure efficiently (by their point of view) with their automobiles or motorcycles, most people cannot, unless affordable and convenient public transport, and preferential traffic management measures are provided. That is, the consumption of road space is highly variable according to income and social status and the assumption of streets as means of collective consumption that should be paid by everybody turns out to be a myth. Consequently, criticisms of public transport subsidies are unsupported in face of the externalities caused by private transport and the large subsidies provided to ensure its dominance.

The environmental dimension
The environmental dimension concerns the continued degradation of urban quality of life. It is represented by high traffic accident rates, increasing pollution, disruption of urban space and the �barrier effect�. It comprises two inequities. Safety inequity relates to differential risk exposures when using streets. The most vulnerable roles � pedestrians and cyclists � are the most affected. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year and a much greater number get injured, a large part of them permanently disabled, as a consequence of the �death account� attached to irresponsible motorization. The importance of the problem places traffic accidents as the worse environmentally-related transport problem in developing countries. The severity of the automobile-pedestrian conflict derives from the adaptation of urban space to motorised traffic, accomplished by using traditional traffic management techniques dedicated to ensure high fluidity to motorised transport, as requisite for high mobility levels for those selected sectors who can afford private transport. The actual result of this sort of spatial occupation reveals a hidden feature of the built environment in developing countries: it is inherently dangerous for the majority of the population and to travel is unsafe in any place, especially for pedestrians and cyclists.

Environmental inequity relates also to few people producing most of the pollution, that will impact all. Automobiles � and motorcycles � are responsible for most of transport-related emissions. Most pollutants are related to serious respiratory diseases and to several forms of cancer. The use of the roads by automobiles causes several externalities that are not charged or adequately controlled, such as accidents, pollution and congestion. The disruption of the urban tissue occurs by destroying historical and architectural heritages, due to extensive road and transport infrastructure construction. The barrier effect represents a pervasive, although disguised impact, that has been affecting residential and living spaces, in face of undue motorised traffic. Main consequences are the reduction in social interaction and in the use of public spaces and the need to define strategies for reducing the risk of accidents. Children and elderly are especially affected in their needs to socialise.
 

Conclusion
Urban transport conditions remain highly inadequate for most of the population in developing countries. In addition,the results of traditional transport planning techniques have been widely disappointing. Used according to a �black-box� ethics, they have been supported by unreliable forecasting techniques, generating transport systems that propagate an unfair distribution of accessibility. Private transport has often been benefited, and non-motorised and local public transport means have been neglected. Consequently, the traditional procedures have been reproducing accessibility, safety and environmental inequities. These problems have been aggravated since the 1980's, in face of the economic restructuring and the fiscal crisis of the State, which prevent the organisation of an adequate supply of public transport means for most of the people. In addition, there are no reasons to believe that the private sector alone will be able � or interested � in ensuring transport services that fit the needs of the majority of the population.

The various inequities concerning transport and traffic conditions in developing countries can be attributed to many factors. It is possible to conclude that they are related to two historical processes: the increasing dominance of private transport � against non-motorised means � and the submission of public transport to a market approach. The dominance of private transport lies behind four sorts of inequity. First, and foremost, the safety inequity, because most of traffic deaths are inflicted to pedestrians. Second, the environmental inequity, because air pollution, as well as urban disruption, are caused mainly by automobiles. Third, the speed inequity (fluidity), because congestion caused by cars inflict major delays to buses. Forth, the space inequity, once the automobile is the most voracious consumer of roads.

Space conformed to automobile use is often large, widely dispersed, where people inside vehicles hide themselves from others and where people outside vehicles feel threatened and excluded from using the public space. Such mechanism, although to a lesser extent, may also be related to the extensive use of motorcycles, such as in Asian cities. Current trends are leading to the polarisation of society into those with and without a car, where the latter are harmed mostly for the deterioration of local services that can no longer compete with car-oriented facilities (Ownes, 1996). Middle and upper class urban spaces symbiotically linked to automobile spaces have produced urban �guetos�, protected from the �outside world�. Along with strong political and economic forces, the adaptation of space to the role of automobile driver has contributed to the privatisation of public spaces: �The insecurity reflected in the seclusion of rich neighbourhoods and the ordeal of using public transportation shrinks public spaces and leads to a perverse kind of privatisation that spills into other spheres (O�Donnell, 1994, p164).

As long as space is conformed to the interests of those with access to automobiles, it creates a special, isolated space that excludes or severely damages the needs of those without such access. The supposed market freedom has been serving to adapt space to the interests of few in the role of car drivers, while denying convenient access to space by most playing the roles of pedestrians, bicycle and public transport users. In this respect, cars help to create a new class of �access poor� (Whitelegg, 1997) and has isolated parts of society such as the poor, the young and the elderly unable to drive (Cervero, 1998).

The direct cause of the remaining inequities is the economics of public transport operation. As previously shown, the low level of accessibility and comfort experienced by public transport users with respect to automobile users derives from four main factors: the poor spatial coverage of bus lines, the low frequency of services, the type of vehicle and the lack of physical integration between services. All characteristics are related to the economics of bus operation. A higher spatial coverage increases the distances travelled and fleet/ human resources, therefore increasing costs. A more frequent service increases the needed fleet and human resources as well. To renew buses in shorter time periods cause a high burden on depreciation costs. Finally, the provision of integrated services implies both physical (stations) and operational costs (control of fares). All problems are inherent to public transport operation however become often unsurmountable when public transport is seen as a market issue, once social objectives are in direct confrontation with the attempt to maximise rentability. A summary of problems is provided in table 9.
 

Table 9: Urban transport crisis in developing countries: dimensions and problems
 

Dimension	Characteristic/problem
Structural	Unbalanced economic growth Frequent threat of economic and political disruption  Generalised poverty for most  Income concentration  Unemployment or sub-employment in unstable informal activities Rapid and uncontrolled urban growth Increasing dependence on motorised transport Lack of urban infrastructure and transport means
Political	Fragile democracy and citizenship Closed decision-making process Differential political representation among social classes Strong linkage between middle classes and the State Strong linkages between internal and external lobbies and the State
Ideological	Collusion between technocracy, elite and middle classes on mobility as symbol of progress and consequent support to automobile adapted space  Prejudice against public transport as a public issue, seen instead as a market issue Subsidies to public transport seen as heretical and support to automobile seen as democratic and beneficial to society
Economic	Actual or supposed fiscal crisis hinders public investment on public transport infrastructure and means Investment on roads justified as democratic and equitable
Institutional	Dominant sectors oppose or hinder effective planning Cities have neither organised agencies nor skilled personnel Urban, transport and traffic policies are uncoordinated and have conflicting objectives and agendas
Technical	Planning surrenders to forecasting techniques Traditional techniques are conservative and reproduce inequities Traditional techniques use foreign assumptions and values Traffic management pretends to be neutral and create a excluding space
Technological	NMT modes neglected; space hostile to pedestrians and cyclists Public transport poorly planned, developed and monitored Commitment to the automotive development model
Operational	Public transport supply highly unstable Traffic management ignores public transport and its users
Social	Physical and economic accessibility conditions are inequitable Relative space appropriation by mode and role highly inequitable
Environmental	Space conformed to motorised transport destroys space for people Accidents became the most severe problem Relative traffic safety of roles and modes highly inequitable Severe pollution impacts on major towns Pollution impacts unevenly distributed  Transport externalities not charged or controlled

4. Tendencies
If current conditions in developing countries are worrisome, which are the tendencies for the near future? The discussion on tendencies will be based on the same dimensions used to summarise current conditions. Considering the large differences within developing countries� past and current characteristics, tendencies must also be diversified, according to a complex combination of social, political and economic factors. It is not possible nor reasonable to try to identify tendencies that fit all countries; my intention here is to conjecture about the main tendencies, that may affect future conditions in most countries.

With structural conditions, the profound economic and social changes fuelled by the globalisation process tend to affect urban transport conditions in developing countries. Capitalism itself passes through a profound restructuring, with the spatial and time reorganisation of production processes (flexible production), the strengthening of capital vis a vis labour, the division and weakening of labour movements, the increase of the female working force and the almost universal State intervention to deregulate markets and dismantle the welfare system (Castells, 1999). Such reorganisation has four main objectives: to deepen the capitalist logic of profit-seeking in capital-labour relations; to increase capital and labour productivity; to create a global production, circulation and market, using all available profit opportunities in the world; to drive the State support to ensure productivity gains and competitiveness inside local economies, often against the welfare principles and the public interest.

This reorganisation have been changing the geography of power, by creating new economic centres, dismantling traditional ones (Sassen, 1994) and generating �black holes of human poverty�, both in rich and poor areas (Castells, 1999, p24). It is highly dynamic, changing who is �in� and who is �out�, and is also restricted, always keeping exclusion areas. With dynamism, while Western Europe and North America were responsible for 50.7 per cent of the world industry production in 1988, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East were responsible for just 4.7 per cent; it is clear now that the new economic world centre is being created in the Asian Pacific region, encompassing Japan as the main leader, China as the rapidly growing economy and several newly industrialised economies, mainly South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan. With exclusion, extreme poverty and deprivation will probably continue in several parts of the world, as part of an income concentration process and strict economic adjustment plans. The most problematic areas are those in Latin America and mainly Africa, where subhuman conditions will prevail in the near future, forming the �forth world� (Castells, 1999); �one thing is clear: the relative conditions of black Africa, already not enviable, are prone to worsen even more� (Diaz Olvera et all, 1997, p121).

Such powerful transformations will have profound impacts on demographic and social conditions. With increasing rural - urban migration, a large number of cities will be unable to accommodate growth and will face severe infrastructure and environmental problems. Urban physical changes will have definite impacts on transport demand, increasing the amount of trips and tending to further overcrowd public transport vehicles. The dependence on motorised transport means will seemingly increase in middle and large urban areas and accessibility inequities will worsen, in face also of continuing social or ethnic segregation.

With labour, both the increase of informal job market and of feminisation of labour may introduce important changes in the use of time by people and also in the household task division, with direct impact on travel demand.

The political dimension reveals also worrisome tendencies. On the one side, the �delegative � democracies that have been replacing authoritarian regimes do not seem to become more representative in the foreseeable future. On the other side, many developing countries continue to face disruption of their political systems, in face of either internal conflicts or external forces. Therefore, true democratic representation of the conflicting interests surrounding transport and traffic policies does not seem viable in the near future. In addition, the restricted educational system will continue to select those who may have access to relevant positions in the State and in the private sector, therefore restricting the decision making process to specific social sectors. Income concentration will generate additional middle classes, who will continue to have privileged access to policy decisions, to influence investments that ensure their social and economic reproduction. Consequently, as long as private motorised transport will continue to be seen as vital for such reproduction, the construction of automobile-based spaces will continue to be fostered and the support to motorcycle use will increase. Although environmental concerns will play a vital role in limiting policy choices, the highway and the automotive industry lobbies will exert increasing influence, once neoliberalism ideology spreads throughout the developing world. Therefore, �middle class cities� will continue to be organised. With social movements, they tend to be fragmented, local and ephemeral, related mainly to cultural, ethnic or religious identities (Castells, 1999); although the "post-modernity" approach, calling attention to the importance of fragmented powers, is also important to consider (see Soja, 1997), I believe the dynamics of social change in developing countries will be shaped primarily by the creation of middle class sectors and the corresponding conflicts with the majority of the poor. However, the strengthening of citizenship brought by such inherent conflicts may countervail the social unsustainability tendencies to some extent.

The ideological dimension may be identified first by an increasing antistatism feeding the State crisis and deteriorating the functioning of the public sector and the very idea of public service (O�Donnell, 1994). Second, it will evolve around the conflict between the automobile supporting ideology and increasing environmental concerns. Such concerns may limit the extent to which space may be adapted to the automobile and will exert increasing pressure on the clear negative impact of motorcycle increasing use, especially in middle to large Asian towns. With public transport, the conflict may be less severe, once neoliberal proposals have been succeeding in promoting privatisation and deregulation in a once publicly controlled and regulated environment. The �cycles� of transport supply may enter a phase where private, deregulated (or lightly regulated) operation will dominate. However, the clear negative effects of such form of supply may lead to reactions in the middle term, generating open, reactive and perhaps violent social movements in some cities.

The economic dimension will continue to be important in face of the persistent fiscal crisis of the State, which may worsen in the near future in several countries, as recently happened with Russia, Mexico, Thailand and Argentina. The non-adherence of capitalist modernisation to equity concerns has no reasons to change its course. Consequently, pressures against public investments will increase and reactions against all sorts of subsidies will be enhanced, further restraining the implementation of equitable urban transport policies. Poverty will persist for most of the population, limiting mobility and accessibility.

At the institutional side, efforts to organise technical agencies or to coordinate policies will be affected by the pressures to dismantle existent public agencies and to lessen public planning capability. This tendency may be opposed in the specific case of large cities, where chaotic urban transport conditions are found to be hampering economic development and the interests of dominant groups. However, strong political conflicts occurring in large metropolitan areas such as Bangkok, Mexico and São Paulo may be very difficult to overcome.

With the technical dimension, the use of traditional techniques generated in the developed countries resists change. Both technocrats, politicians and expertise seem to be trapped in the �world� of available methodologies, which are being propagated more easily now in face of advanced modelling and computing techniques. In addition, the symbolism of �technical perfection� and �scientific neutrality� seem difficult to overcome. This is strengthened still further in face of the closed decision making process and the alliance among local expertise, local industry lobbies and foreign interests, which will be fostered by globalisation. Rapid social and economic changes and lack of adequate data may persist for a long time in most places, making difficult to analyse conditions. Increasing use of private motorised transport by middle classes will reinforce the use of traffic management techniques to support space adaptation for their convenient use. However, the strong attachment to current practices may be affected by the increasing environmental and social concerns � including the gender issue � that have been forging alternative approaches and introducing additional variables in the planning exercise. Future practices may also be affected if the development of democracy and citizenship forces the State to open the decision making process to alternative external participation.

With transport technology, the neglect of pedestrian and cyclists� needs seems difficult to overcome in the near future, in face of the deepness of the ideological prejudice against all non-motorised means and also the deficiencies of the political representation process, which restrains the access of people enacting such roles to policy decisions. With vehicle technology, a conflict seems highly probable, related to the aforementioned increasing environmental concerns. It may to a certain extent counterbalance the aforementioned prejudice. While private motorization will increase, other, more environmentally friendly modes tend to be increasingly supported. Such movement has started in Asia with the NMV ten years ago and is getting stronger, as long as more people and institutions support the proposals. Although such movement may affect public transport technology � in the form for instance of electric modes replacing private transport - a similar conflict between private and public transport seems less probable, once privatisation and deregulation proposals have been succeeding in transferring the issue to the market sphere. Therefore, bus technology will probably be confined to poor quality vehicles and facilities in the foreseeable future, should current practices and approaches remain. However, should democracy and citizenship develop in some countries, better public transport will be demanded; such movement will be stronger if poor people�s income increases, once mobility will increase.

At the operational side, supply of public transport may continue to be subject to instability, in face of deregulation tendencies and lack of investment. The aforementioned difficulty in organising public agencies will negatively affect the organisation of priority treatment to public transport and the control of the quality of services.

With the social dimension, several interrelated tendencies may be expected.

Motorization is expected to increase in the next years in most countries. Major increases in autownership may be expected in large countries such as China, India and Brazil and increases in motorcycle ownership may be expected all throughout Asia. �As incomes increase, the poorest people in countries like India and China will be able to own bicycles and those who own bicycles today may opt to buy motorcycles when they become richer� (Mohan and Twari, 1998, p31). In large Vietnam cities, although bikes are still dominant, motorised two wheeler transport may surpass them in face of transport and fiscal policies (Cusset, 1997). In Asian cities, motorbikes have been increasing rapidly and in Bangalore (India) their number changed from 62,000 in 1977 to 503,000 in 1992 (Hierli, 1993).

Consequent to the recent increase in auto ownership, a higher portion of daily trips started to be made by cars. In Latin America, auto trips between 1986 and 1990 increased from 17 per cent to 34 per cent in Buenos Aires and from 18 per cent to 21 per cent in Santiago (Figueroa, 1999). In São Paulo, auto trips as part of motorised trips increased from 26 per cent in 1967, to 35 per cent in 1977, to 42 per cent in 1987 and finally to 47 per cent in 1997 (CMSP, 1998). The same phenomenon may be expected in all countries where car ownership will increase.

Increased motorization is expected to lead to worse safety and environmental problems. With safety, the occupation of the built environment by motorised vehicles without proper safety measures will lead to increased traffic accident figures. The impact would not be confined to fatal accidents but would instead produce a much greater number of injured and handicapped people. The increasing use of automobiles in developing countries will have to face a "death payroll", leading us to a key question for developing countries: how many people will die or get handicapped until traffic safety improves? The technical, even cynical view that �ultimately� traffic accidents will decrease has to be firmly rejected.

If we consider the estimated figure of 1 to 2 extra fatalities per each new 1,000 cars, for every one million new cars we could expect from 1,000 to 2,000 extra fatalities, from 3,000 to 6,000 extra permanently disabled people and from 15,000 to 30,000 extra injured people. If one imagines a modest increase of 10 million new cars per year in the developing world, resulting accident figures are self-explanatory. Although the problem tends to be severe all over the developing world, large countries such as China, India and Brazil call attention for their prospective figures. The Chinese case, for the rapidness of motorization, may �represent one of the most significant global public health problems of the twenty-first century.� It was estimated that the climbing fatality curve would peak at 180,000 fatalities per year, with 3.6 million injury accidents (Navin et coll, 1994b, p53). Developing countries, in the words of Whitelegg (1997, p145) �will also come to have the dubious distinction of sharing this most recent manifestation of freedom and economic progress from the world�s car manufacturers.� Increased traffic accidents and severance may fuel open social movements to protect quality of life, especially in residential areas violated by undue traffic.

Table 10: Recent trends on traffic fatalities, selected developing countries

Country		Traffic fatalities		Change (%)
		Initial	Final
25-year period (a)	China, 1970-19971	9,654	73,861	665
	India, 1971-19962	15,034	69,800	364
	Brazil, 1971-1995 3	10,692	27,886	161
13-year period (a)	Thailand, 1980-1992 4	4,493	8,184	82
	South Korea, 1982-1995 5	6,110	10,323	69

(a) approximately; (b) annual average rate of growth
(1)Dianpin, 1999;(2) Mohan, 1999; (3)Denatran, 1996; (4)Tanaboriboon, 1994; (5) Lee (1998).

With congestion, the increase in auto use in major cities of the developing world is already causing a rapid increase in congestion (table 4). Such increase is exponential, due to the physical nature of the volume-speed relationship. Increased congestion will foster reaction from automobile users, that will continue to exert both hidden (indirect) or open pressures on traffic authorities to improve conditions to use cars.
 

Table 11: Recent traffic speed decreases in major towns

City	Period	Speed (km/h)
		Before	After
Beijing (China)1	1980 � 1985	28.2	15.6
São Paulo (Brazil) 2	1984 � 1997	28.2	19.3
Seoul (Korea) 3	1980 �1994	30.5	23.2
Shanghai (China) 4	1985 � 1995	19.1	14.0
Warshaw (Poland) 5	1988 � 1994	30.0	14 � 20.0

(1) Hayashi et coll, 1998; ring roads, non-weighted average calculated by the author, using source data for each ring (2) CMSP, 1998; evening peak, outbound direction (3) Kim and Gallent, 1998 (4) Lu and YE, 1998 (5) Pucher and Lefèvre, 1996.

As stressed before, most important for our purposes is that congestion has a major impact on bus operations. In Beijing, the decrease in bus speeds between 1978 and 1988 is estimated to have incurred in a 13 percent decrease in carrying capacity (Sit, 1996). In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, severe congestion led to respectively 16 and 10 percent increases in bus operating costs (IPEA/ANTP 1998). The attempt to improve bus speeds will face opposition in most places once it requires reclaiming scarce road space for buses, against automobile-based interests.

Increased motorization will also lead to increased pollution. The World Bank estimates that CO₂ emissions may be multiplied by five until 2010 as compared to 1986 levels, with the main increases located in the former Soviet Union, China, centrally-planned Asia and other developing countries (World Bank, 1996). Especially worrisome are the increase in automobile use in large countries such as China and India: should they reach a modest rate of 300 cars per 1,000 population, the consequences to air pollution and space consumption are unsustainable (Whitelegg, 1993). Also disturbing is the expected increase in pollution from increased motorcycle use, once they are less environmentally friendly vehicles. The problem is expected to be very serious in Asia.

Social changes and transport
There has been some debate on how the informational revolution will affect transport demand. For Castells �there is no structural and systematic relationship between the diffusion of informational technologies and the overall change in the level of employment� (Castells, 1999, p284). Recent research suggests that the house-worker, contrary to initial beliefs, will not constitute a large number of the workforce. Most studies show that telecommunication �substitutes for rather than stimulates trip making�, making average daily distances decrease. However most activities are not suited for home working (Cervero, 1998). What seems to be more probable is the decentralisation of the workplace, once regional offices working with computer networks may keep workers distributed in the space. New telecommunication services seem to be used to better organise trips rather than replacing them (Bieber et coll, 1992) Also, shopping by telecommunication seems to be just a complement to the traditional shopping activities. Although important for analysing tendencies in the developing world, differences among them preclude any conclusive assumption. In some countries with an already developed industry and a relatively large middle class, the telecommunication �revolution� may cause some change in the daily travel pattern; however, in most developing countries significant changes are unlikely. What seems to be much more relevant is the change in the labour market � the size of the informal market, the feminisation of labour � and income level and distribution. The summary of the most probable tendencies may be seen on table 12.

These tendencies reveals that urban transport problems in the developing world may worsen significantly in few years. Recalling the reasoning used when analysing table 1 cities in the developing world may evolve from one type to another with severe social and environmental impacts. Increased motorization trends will be the main factor for such negative impacts, should the same political conditions and technical approaches remain.
 

Table 12: Urban transport crisis in developing countries: major tendencies

Dimension	Tendencies
Structural	Continued unbalanced economic growth Danger of economic and political disruptions will remain high Poverty and deprivation will continue for most Unemployment and the share of the Informal sector will increase  Income distribution will be concentrated in selected sectors Difficulty in controlling urban growth will remain Dependence on motorised transport will increase Deficiency of urban infrastructure and transport means will become more severe
Political	Slow improvement in democracy and citizenship Closed decision-making process will face increasing opposition; social movements may experience new opportunities Differential political representation among social classes will persist New middle classes will be generated and will strengthen their influence on public policies Linkages between internal and external lobbies and the State will intensify
Ideological	The idea of mobility as symbol of progress will face alternative, socially and environmentally based assumptions  Prejudice against public transport as a public issue will intensify and pressures for privatisation and deregulation will increase Opposition to subsidies to public transport will get stronger
Economic	Fiscal crisis and neoliberal proposals will pressure for decreasing investment on public transport infrastructure and means Increasing Investment on roads, although subject to alternative social and environmental approaches
Institutional	Dominant sectors will oppose or delay effective planning Increasing difficulty in organising agencies and training personnel Increasing difficulty in coordinating urban, transport and traffic policies
Technical	Traditional techniques will face alternative proposals Traffic management will continue to support an excludent space
Technological	Neglect of NMT will continue however facing increasing opposition Public transport will remain poorly planned, developed and monitored Continued commitment to the automotive development model, although facing alternative proposals
Operational	Public transport supply will remain highly unstable Traffic management will continue to neglect public transport and its users
Social	Physical and economic accessibility conditions will remain inequitable Relative space appropriation by mode and role will remain inequitable
Environmental	Traffic safety will worsen and remain the most severe problem Relative traffic safety will remain highly inequitable Pollution on major towns may be alleviated but will increase in others  Pollution impacts will remain unevenly distributed

5. Perspectives
Transport is not an end in itself. The �end� has to be the equitable appropriation of space and the corresponding access to social and economic life. Structural changes depend on factors beyond the direct influence of urban and transport polices and require enhanced democracy and citizenship, extensive access to education and health, increased wealth for the poor and better income distribution. Practical changes will have to be pursued inside a highly conflicting political arena and within a economic globalisation process whose impacts will be extensive and severe. State structure and functioning are very different among developing countries, implying different possibilities of pressing for changes; cultural and religious constraints may pose further obstacles. The attachment of the bureaucracy and the technocracy to the elite and middle class interests may be countervailed by pressures from organised groups and by the inherent conflicts and tensions that emerge from the increasing desire for equity and quality of life. A particular positive aspect is that the feasibility of new solutions may benefit also from the emergence of the environmental movement � and its impact on the way urban transport is seen � and from the urban transport crisis itself, that may help support alternative policies that were never adopted before or that have been facing opposition. Increasing equity concerns may be used to oppose negative effects. The planning process will have to be changed, to develop new forms of driving and controlling urban growth, to address non-motorised and public transport as priority means and to define restraints to undesirable use of private transport.

The major challenge to change current conditions � in addition to the mentioned structural changes � is to modify roadway building and use, by reassessing them according to social and equity concerns and ensuring safety and priority to the most numerous and vulnerable roles. Negative externalities caused by motorised transport in general and automobiles in particular should be controlled, such as traffic accidents, congestion, pollution, urban disruption and traffic severance. The final objective of all these actions is to revert the actual privatisation of roads caused by the adaptation of cities to the selected sectors that may use the automobile and to consequently recapture roads as public assets.

In addition to changes in the planning process and in the use of roads, the relationship between the State and the private sector in supplying public transport has to be carefully analysed. Recent trends to deregulation and privatisation need to confront the central issues of equity and efficiency. The role of the public sector in regulating and enforcing public transport operation has to be preserved and used primarily to ensure that the transport needs of the majority are fulfilled, that public transport works in support of the urban social and economic life, and in accordance to equity and efficiency objectives. Regulatory environment should be flexible, to provide services better suited to the market, and should be tailored to stimulate mode diversity and physical and operational integration, to attract automobile users. Regulation should also include fare subsidisation whenever necessary, for those who otherwise would not be attended by the market. Contrary to viewing them as wasteful, they should be considered as an investment, provided they can be controlled by society, actually reach the target groups and are not used to support inefficiency.

For all these changes to be accomplished is vital that the crucial alliances that have been maintaining and reproducing inequities be opposed. A particular points is at stake: however important external interests may be to yield such negative results, in most cases the alliances among internal forces � the State, the elite, the bureaucracy, commercial and financial interests � are the main obstacle to overcome.

Finally, it must be stressed that the large differences among developing countries will naturally lead to different choices regarding specific solutions, that have to be decided by those social and political forces dealing with the issue, in any particular case. In view of the widely disparate conditions of developing countries, it is difficult to summarise the main concepts and proposals.

While pursuing these objectives and applying such measures, planners in developing countries should be aware of the essential tension inherently imbedded in our challenge: that between equity and efficiency. Such conflict has been coexisted with humanity for a long time and was fuelled in the modern era by economic modernisation and the generation of profound social differences among people. Traditional approaches and the ideological principles attached to the current globalisation process are pressing again for efficiency as the prime objective. While a liberal approach calls for efficiency even at the expense of equity, the alternative approach calls for equity as the prime objective, provided a minimum efficiency, socially accorded, is ensured. The latter is our path. Although complex, it is as simple as that.
 

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