CTD student wins prize for young researcher contribution

UP doctoral student Nama Cheure received the Michael Beesley Award for the best paper by an early career researcher at the 18th International Conference on Ownership and Competition in Land Passenger Transport (Thredbo) in Cape Town, October 2024. Nama's paper is based on her Ph.D research work, titled "We are not all the same: Preference-Based Market Segmentation among Public Transport Users in Soweto, South Africa". 

One of her findings is that there is a group of potential public transport users in mixed income areas like Soweto that is really sensitive to first and last mile issues like walk time to get to the bus. Serving this segment with a BRT is really hard, since we tend to focus on buses with high frequencies and speed, not more area coverage with shorter walk distances. It might be more rational to accept that this is the natural market for small-vehicle type services, like the highly successful minibus-taxi industry - and figure out how to partner more effectively in cross-modal partnerships.