Lecture

Urban Mobility in Africa

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Description

This lecture discusses the challenges and deficits in urban mobility and transportation in Africa, including issues with institutional reforms, regulatory frameworks, and public transport services. It addresses persistent constraints such as chaotic urban space occupation, commuter patterns, and inadequate service provision during peak hours. The lecture also highlights the dominance of informal transport operators, the lack of protection for active modes of transportation, and the ongoing challenges of automobile congestion, road safety, and environmental pollution in African cities.

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Related concepts (17)

Active mobility

Active mobility, soft mobility, active travel, active transport or active transportation is the transport of people or goods, through non-motorized means, based around human physical activity. The best-known forms of active mobility are walking and cycling, though other modes include running, rowing, skateboarding, kick scooters and roller skates. Due to its prevalence, cycling is sometimes considered separately from the other forms of active mobility.

Traffic congestion

Traffic congestion is a condition in transport that is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing. Traffic congestion on urban road networks has increased substantially since the 1950s. When traffic demand is great enough that the interaction between vehicles slows the traffic stream, this results in congestion. While congestion is a possibility for any mode of transportation, this article will focus on automobile congestion on public roads.

Road traffic safety

Road traffic safety refers to the methods and measures used to prevent road users from being killed or seriously injured. Typical road users include pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, vehicle passengers, horse riders, and passengers of on-road public transport (mainly buses and trams). Best practices in modern road safety strategy: The basic strategy of a Safe System approach is to ensure that in the event of a crash, the impact energies remain below the threshold likely to produce either death or serious injury.

Effects of cars

Cars affect many people not just drivers and car passengers. The externalities of automobiles, similarly to other economic externalities, are the measurable difference in costs for other parties to those of the car proprietor, such costs not taken into account when the proprietor opts to drive their car.

Car dependency

Car dependency is the concept that some city layouts cause cars to be favoured over alternate forms of transportation, such as bicycles, public transit, and walking. In many modern cities, automobiles are convenient and sometimes necessary to move easily. When it comes to automobile use, there is a spiraling effect where traffic congestion produces the 'demand' for more and bigger roads and removal of 'impediments' to traffic flow. For instance, pedestrians, signalized crossings, traffic lights, cyclists, and various forms of street-based public transit, such as trams.

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