Investigating Informal Paratransit Stops Formation in Existing Urbanism: A Case Study in Greater Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

Formal stops aroused the interest of many researchers. Many of these studies focused on calculating the walking distance to transit station. However, only few researches studied paratransit stops. The current study focuses on the phenomena of informal paratransit stops in Greater Cairo. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the parameters causing the formation of informal paratransit stops in existing urbanism. Investigating these parameters helps to build a knowledge base for this phenomenon and support future researches which could help in solving the problem of the formation of informal paratransit stop. The review of related literature leads to propose five main parameters affecting the formation of informal paratransit stops (quality of life, mobility and quality of public transit, transit station, built environment, and transit user). The researchers choose Dokki district in Giza as an example for studying paratransit stops in Egypt. The study then uses qualitative and quantitative methods to validate the proposed parameters. The methods include specialist questionnaire, user's questionnaire and field survey. Research results confirmed the importance of all the parameters especially, mobility and quality of public transit, and the importance of sub-parameters such as (land use – number of served routes – accessibility – reliability – etc.) on the informal formation of paratransit stops in existing urbanism.