Paratransit Vehicle Counting Campaigns
The Mobility and Transport Observatory (OMT) is a Mozambican civil association that develop studies, monitor policies and propose improvements in the field of transport and urban mobility.
Overview of the project
The Paratransit Vehicle Counting Campaign (“Contagem de Chapas”) is an annual activity of quantitative evaluation of the supply of passenger transport vehicles in Maputo (“Chapas”) that has been carried out since 2015. It is an action that has been led by different entities over the years, always in direct collaboration with associations of transport operators.
The controllers of the associations of each of the transport terminals write down the license plates of vehicles that work each day between August 15 and September 14, organized by the different routes where they operate. This data is then digitized and analyzed to build up until 30 different indicators organized into five categories:
- On the capacity of the offer by vehicles and seats;
- On the distribution of the offer by routes;
- About work on different days of the week;
- On the fidelity of the vehicles to the routes; and
- About the vehicles.
The first year started only with the associations and routes in the city of Maputo. Year by year, the coverage area of the study was expanded to complete the entire Maputo Metropolitan Area: Matola (2019), Katembe (2020), Boane (2021) and Marracuene (2022).
The purpose of the project is to monitor the availability and behavior of the supply of “paratransit” vehicles in Maputo.
Ongoing research
Anual activity
- 7 annual campaigns carried out,
- An understanding of the transport offer dimension with a census with more than 2,500 license plates through 154 routes of paratransit transport around the Maputo Metropolitan Area,
- Quantitative perspective of the evolution of supply over the years, especially in the city of Maputo,
- Ability to build more than 30 offer and performance indicators for the Chapas service.
- The direct collaboration with the operators (association of owners) and their controllers on the transport terminals have produced a great engagement. This allows to improve the knowledge around others aspects of the operation and facilitate new research.
- Collecting basic data allows to produce estimates or forecasts on the passenger transport industry in the city.
The last three years was funded by the CoM SSA project (Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa) and Transport Metropolitan Agency of Maputo.
organisation
The Mobility and Transport Observatory (OMT) is a Mozambican civil association made up of transport specialists and young people who are starting their professional career in the industry that aims to develop studies, monitor policies and propose improvements in the field of transport and urban mobility.
The OMT aspires to support the development and specialization of the mobility and transport industry at urban, metropolitan, regional and national levels through research, monitoring and promoting debate and exchange between the stakeholders.
Some of the important partners working together with OMT are the Metropolitan Agency of Transport, City Council of Maputo, University College of London, Architect Without Borders Spain, UN Habitat or Barcelona Metropolitan Area.
in collaboration
- City Council of Maputo,
- Rede Uthende,
- Waza,
- The operators: ASSOTRABA, ASOCTRA, ATHMAP, ATK, ATROMAP, UNICOTRAMA, UTRAMAP, ATRIMU, COOPTRAMAR and ATROPAM.