Size of Cities and Transport Costs in African Countries of the CFA Franc Zone

Abstract

The results presented here want to make a contribution in the field of transport. Our purpose is to shed light on the evolution of public transport costs as the size of the city increases. We also try to highlight the role of certain factors that are characteristic of the supply: level of service, vehicle capacity, spatial extension, frequencies, etc. In this article, we show, from a sample of 25 African cities, that it is doubtful that economies will emerge in the operation of urban public transport when the size of cities grows. The growth in operating expenses, more than proportional to the size of the cities, can be explained by both a growth in the unit cost (at the place-kilometer-offered) and the offer to the inhabitant. Large cities (in terms of population) escape the drift of unit charges, but not per capita charges because of a particularly strong supply. The comparison between large cities and small towns suggests that the capacity of the buses in circulation can be a decisive factor in the improvement of productivity. Capacity growth, however, appears to be occurring in very large cities, such as Abidjan or Bamako, whose counterpart may well be @ the lengthening of travel times and distances. These results then raise the question of a divergence between the performance of urban services and the economic efficiency of spaces.