Dear colleagues in the VREF Community,If you are joining Transforming Transportation in Washington, D.C. this year we welcome you to also be part of Paratransit / Popular Transportation Day on March 13.
For the full program and registration, please visit https://www.populartransport.net/3rdpptd2025
VREF is part of organizing this day and looks forward to a mini-conference focusing on recognizing and elevating paratransit services—also known as “popular transportation, informal transportation, intermediate public transportation, or artisanal transportation”—the privately provided, publicly serving local transportation services and systems that emerge in nearly every city in the Global South.
The theme for the 3rd P/PTD is “Pathway Partners: Engaging paratransit/ popular transportation as assets to building sustainable transportation.” The 3rd P/PTD seeks to: Show progress in the global understanding of popular transportation, showcasing lessons learned from city/metropolitan integration projects; Strengthen the networks working to include, improve and integrate popular transport in policy, planning, investments; Begin to unlock global finance and funding sources; and, Lay the groundwork for convening the driver-owners, and workers of micro- and small-enterprises that operate paratransit/ popular transportation. The sessions will highlight practice (projects and policies), people (workers and owner-drivers), resources (MDBs, IFIs and philanthropy), and research (knowledge and tools).
The 3rd P/PTD is co-presented and co-organized by the Africa Transport Program (SSATP), Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia’s Climate School (CSUD), Climate Champions, Digital Transportation for Africa (DT4A), Global Network for Popular Transportation (GNPT), International Transport Workers Federation (ITWF), the Partnership for Research in Informal and Shared Mobility (PRISM), Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC), Transport for Cairo, Volvo Educational and Research Foundations (VREF), the World Bank, and WRI’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.
