Urban Transport: Struggling with Growth
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from enforcing standards on the road. Overloading of vehicles is also a safety concern, although recent improvements in construction have allowed for increases in the permitted capacity of some vehicles.
Costs: Fuel, Labor, and Taxes In the industrialized world, labor is the largest recurrent cost of conventional bus operation. But in African cities, fuel takes first place, accounting for half of the total cost of operations. Fuel is also the largest cost for minibus operations. That cost has risen with international oil prices in recent years. While Accra and Lagos stand out for their relatively low fuel costs, diesel fuel and premium gasoline typically cost between $0.80 and $1.00 per liter—and even more in some cities (table 6.10). Because of the region’s high unemployment and low wages, labor can account for less than 25 percent of total operating costs for large buses in Africa. The significance of this cost structure is that the viability of bus operations is even more sensitive to fuel costs in Africa than it is in industrialized countries. In all of the study cities, minibus operators also face nonoperational charges, such as petty extortion from enforcement agencies and local
Table 6.10 Fuel Prices in Cities, July 2007 (US$ per liter) City Abidjan Accra Addis Ababa Bamako Conakry Dakar Dar es Salaam Douala Kampala Kigali Kinshasa Lagos Nairobi Ouagadougou Average
Premium gasoline
Diesel fuel
1.25 0.49 0.60 1.17 1.50 1.10 0.93 0.95 1.02 1.15 0.92 0.71 0.92 1.18 0.97
1.09 0.43 0.42 0.90 0.69 0.90 0.87 0.83 0.88 0.99 0.81 0.83 0.76 0.94 0.78
Source: City authorities; World Development Indicators (data assembled by Kumar and Barrett 2008).