Policy Package 2. Connecting Poor Places to the Poles of Development
labor. In Morocco, for example, the recent investments in peri-urban rail links have enabled workers to commute into the prime cities of Rabat and Casablanca from Salé, Kenitra, and Mohammedia (Er-Rouch 2009). As cities grow, so do commuting distances; in Egypt, the average time spent commuting increased by about a third between 1988 and 1998 (Assaad and Arntz 2005). While rarely justified on a purely financial basis and therefore requiring substantial public contributions, mass transit investments support smooth urban expansion (chapter 4) and yield significant economic benefits. Many MENA cities will need new approaches to urban mass transit. At present, it is common for mass transit to consist largely of low-quality publicly owned bus services, and unaffordable public investment in light rail is seen as the only alternative. However, there are other potential strategies: • First, many MENA economies have informal urban shared taxi sectors, providing low-quality services. However, they often lack private bus services of high enough quality to compete with private cars for the middle-class market. Lifting barriers to private investment in urban transport can encourage the development of formal, highquality private bus services. • Second, bus rapid transport (BRT) is proving itself a lower-cost alternative to light rail for high-volume mass transit. At its peak, Bogotá’s TransMillenio system can move 25,000 people per hour across a single point in space. It is estimated that dedicated bus lanes can handle 40 to 60 vehicles per hour (Levinson, Zimmerman, Clinger, and Rutherford 2002), competing with private cars for speed, comfort, and cost. The BRT model also permits the relatively simple participation of multiple operators on the network, some of which may be private. • Third, improving transborder connectivity will be particularly important in ensuring that lagging areas harness spillover connectivity benefits. A strategy to improve cross-border connectivity could contain the following components: – An analysis of the main obstacles to cross-border connectivity: procedures, regulations, the lack of regional logistics services, and missing infrastructure links (roads, railways, multimodal facilities, border infrastructure, and logistical platforms). The Transport and Trade Facilitation Audit (TTFA) is an established methodology for identifying such bottlenecks. – Concrete international cooperation in areas such as data, training, and information systems – Spatial planning to capture economies of scale and match investments to transport flows
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