Codatu at Transforming Transportation

On Wednesday 12 March, Jean-Jacques Helluin , General Delegate of Codatu, spoke at the session ‘Improving Paratransit: The role of cities in urban mobility’ at Transforming Transportation in Washington.

During this session, he explained the most complex aspects for local authorities of professionalising paratransit, particularly in terms of establishing trust and collaboration between the various stakeholders (associations, operators, drivers, etc.).

He emphasised the importance of supporting local authorities and the various stakeholders in order to better understand the constraints, the role of each party and how it is possible, in terms of the economic model, to improve artisanal transport in a win-win situation. This is what @Codatu does in its areas of intervention, by creating dialogue with all stakeholders and training operators using tools created specifically to improve the management of their activity.

The new generation of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), promoted by MobiliseYourCity, can be very relevant for this, because today they integrate paratransit as a key element of urban mobility.

An important step forward in the challenge of improving paratransit

On 13 March, during ‘paratransit day’, Jean-Jacques Helluin presented a tool recently developed by CODATU in Madagascar that could be decisive in improving urban mobility in cities in the Global South: the paratransit minibus operating account.

It is designed so that all the variables are clearly highlighted in terms of responsibility: those that fall under the operators, those that fall under the public authorities, those that must be negotiated between the two parties. It is thus a fundamental tool for restoring what poses the most problems: dialogue and trust between the different parties, and finding win-win solutions. The case of Antananarivo, for example, shows the importance of the commercial speed of minibuses in the economic balance, and provides the basic data for improving the system.

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