Local transport solutions: People, Paradoxes and Progress
Lessons arising from the spread of intermediate means of transport
by Paul Starkey

Summary 9

Introduction 13
Transport problems and the raising of awareness 13
An analytical planning framework 15
Scope of this study 16

Paradoxical adoption patterns 17
International adoption patterns of transport technologies 17
Within-country adoption patterns are not uniform 18
Explicable patterns and 'random' or 'chaotic' elements 19

Key lessons 21
Diversity, complementarity and levels of use 21
Economic efficiency and profitability 24
User perspectives 27
Promotion 30
Credit and subsidies 36
Critical mass 37
Gender 41
People with special needs 44
Safety, welfare and environmental considerations 44
Regulation and prohibition 46

Implications and ways to move forward 48
Alternative solutions to transport problems 48
Technical choices, diversity and complementarity 49
Multipurpose devices and transport services 51
Cost and affordability 52
Supply, distribution and maintenance systems 53
Credit and subsidies 54
Critical mass 56
Programme focus, prioritisation and poverty alleviation issues 58
Gender 59
Monitoring and evaluation 60
Networking and information exchange 61

Conclusions 64

References 66

Read the summary
Click here to download the 3-page summary as a PDF document
(NB: this has a file size of just 85 kb and should download very quickly).

Obtain the full document
Click here to download the whole 71-page PDF document Local transport solutions: people, paradoxes and progress'. 
(NB: this has a file size of 540kb and may take 2-5 minutes to download).

If you do not have Adobe Acrobat 4 which is needed to view and print this pdf file, you can download it free of charge from http://www.adobe.com