This document summarizes key points from two lightening talks about decarbonizing transport in Latin America. The first talk discusses how transit reforms aimed at promoting public transport in Latin American cities have often reduced transit ridership by 9-12% on average due to higher costs and lower frequency. The second talk examines ride-hailing apps and finds through simulations that they are very unlikely to reduce vehicle kilometers traveled and likely increase it by taking passengers from more sustainable modes. Both findings suggest the need to rethink current approaches to transport reforms and policies governing ride-hailing apps to better promote sustainability goals.

1. Decarbonizing Transport: lightNing Talks
Andrés Gómez-Lobo, University of Chile
Transit reforms and ridehailing

2. Two key dimensions on decarbonizing transport
• Promote public transport:
• Key to reduce carbon footprint in transport:
• Modal shift from less sustainable private motorized modes
• Easier and faster to introduce low emission technology (e.g. Santiago and Bogota with
electric buses)
• Latin America has been a pioneer in transit reforms since Curitiba in the
1970’s and Transmilenio (Bogotá) in 2000
• Inspired many reforms all around the world and in Latin America in particular
• Have they worked in promoting modal change?
• Ride-hailing applications:
• Do they help or hinder the prospect for a more sustainable transport sector?

3. SITM reforms in intermediate cities in Colombia
• Following the success of Transmilenio, Colombia implemented a series of
reforms in intermediate cities between 2006 and 2016 (Barranquilla,
Bucaramanga, Cartagena, Cali, Medellín, and Pereira)
• Gold standard BRT reforms (called SITM)
• Difference in Difference analysis on the impact of reform on transit
ridership based on unique dataset
Gómez-Lobo, A. (2020), ‘Transit reforms in intermediate cities of Colombia: An ex-post evaluation’ Transportation
Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 132, pp. 349-364

4. Results: decreased transit use
The graph shows the total number of
passengers and vehicles in service in the case
of Bucaramanga. In this city SITM was
implemented in December 2009.
Overall results indicate that transit reforms
reduced transit ridership between 9% and
12% on average across the different cities.

5. Why did this happen?
Costly Reforms
• Labor formalization
• High-standard vehicles
• Technology (electronic pre-payment systems and fleet management technology)
• Infrastructure
Fleet size
adjustment
• Fares could not be increased
• No public subsidies (initially)
• Only adjustment variable to make fare income equal costs was fleet size
Lower
demand
• Lower fleet size decrease coverage and frequency
• In turn, this increased users’ time cost and ride experience (quality deteriorated)
• Which reduced transit use
• Anecdotal evidence that users switched to less sustainable modes such as cars, motorcycles
or moto-taxis with higher carbon footprint
• Lower demand generated financial crisis for systems

6. Conclusions transit reforms
• What has been shown for SITM reforms in Colombia applies to many other
reforms in Latin America:
• Transantiago (Chile)
• SITP (Bogota)
• Mibus (Panama City)
• Many other in Mexico, Perú and others
• Success of Transmilenio has not been replicated in other LAC experiences
and so the environmental benefits of promoting transit have not
materialized
• Need to urgently rethink transit reforms in Latin America

7. Ride-hailing applications
• Monte-Carlo simulations on the effect of ride-hailing applications on
VKT
• Passenger occupational rates
• Non-passenger km rates
• Many other parameters
• Results: very unlikely that ride-hailing applications will reduce VKT
unless passenger occupation increases substantially
Tirachini, A. and A. Gómez-Lobo (2020), ‘Does ride-hailing increase or decrease vehicle kilometers traveled
(VKT)? A simulation approach for Santiago de Chile’, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, 14(3),
pp. 187-204.

8. Rayle, et al
(2016)
Henao (2017) Tirachini y Gómez-
Lobo (2019)
CNP (2018)
City San Francisco,
EEUU
Denver, EEUU Santiago, Chile Santiago, Chile
Survey size (N) 313 308 1.474 1.311
Taxi 36% 9,6% 40,7% 39,2%
Public Transport 31% 22,2% 32,5% 37,6%
Private automobile 6% 32,8% 12,1% 13,2%
Bicycle 2% 11,9%(*) 1,3% 0,8%
Walking 7% - 2,4% 0,8%
Other modes 10% 11,3% 5,6% 14,1%
Would not have taken trip 8% 12,2% 5,4% 5,4%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100%
The reason is not hard to find
Answer to the question:
if ride hailing application
was not available how
would you have made
your trip?
Passengers from
sustainable and efficient
modes are being
syphoned off to less
sustainable ride-hailing
services

9. Conclusions ride hailing
• Very unlikely that ride-hailing applications reduce aggregate VKT, they
most probably increase VKT
• This has negative impacts on congestion (depending on the time of
travel) and emissions (modal switch to a less sustainable mode)
• Policy implications: tax on ride hailing services?
• Sao Paulo
• Mexico City