Public Transport Affordability Evaluation for Addis Ababa City

The affordability of transportation services refers to the financial burden the travelers bear in purchasing such services. Key factors that affect affordability include travel demand, supply, competitiveness, quality, and cost of transport services. Surveys indicate that transport users consider affordability an important planning objective, but conventional transport planning tends to give little consideration to it. Public transport is one of the key instruments to bring sustainable mobility to cities, and its supply and quality must be maintained at acceptable levels for it to be a desirable mode of transportation. The ever-increasing demand for mass mobility resulting from rapid population growth and extended urbanization in the City of Addis Ababa calls for the provision of good quality, affordable urban public transport services. In this research, the affordability of public transport of Addis Ababa was studied. The majority of data were acquired from the City Transport Bureau. The analysis of data produced a city-wide observed affordability index (Affo) of 14.13% with the highest and lowest values of 32.11 and 3.69% for Q5 and Q1, respectively. The difference between potential and observed affordability is 28.34%. This indicates that, to reach the same motorized trip rates as the third quintile, those households in the lowest quintile need to increase their transport expenditure by 28.34% in Addis Ababa. The results of this study show that the dual affordability metric both in terms observed and potential affordability can provide an effective basis to improve the affordability of public transport in the city by adopting measures that are customized according to regional characteristics at the sub-city level.