Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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Figure 25: Motorized trip patterns in Cairo 2022
Source: Slide 24 Prof Khaled El Araby International Symposium February 2013
4.2.4.1. Buses/trams
Failures to keep regular bus services updated in terms of quality and regularity has resulted in a fall
in their share to just over 20% from almost 40% in only 10 years despite low fares. Similarly, tram
services have been partially dismantled and remaining services, due to lack of investments and
adequate maintenance, have deteriorated so far that they are of only marginal importance. These
losses to public transport have beenmade up partially by the metro system, but mostly by shared taxis
and microbuses that now account for over 50% of all public transport trips.
As a result, currently, road based public transport is provided by a large and inefficient public
company (CTA), a large number of small and informal minibus operating companies, and an even
larger number of individually owned minibuses and taxis. The Cairo Transport Authority (CTA) has
42,000 employees to run 4,500 buses and its sister public sector operator has 7,000 employees to run
just 900 buses. This represents 9 and 8 employees per bus – easily over twice the staffing ratios for an
efficient bus companies.
While minibuses now fulfil an important role in the provision of urban public transport, among the
problems they bring include disproportionate contributions to traffic congestion, air pollution, and
road accidents. When individual vehicles are given a licensed to operate on a specific route, it is
impossible to control the capacity available at specific times of day – all owners want all their
minibuses operating all the time to generate as much revenue as possible, even when this means that
an excessive number of vehicles are operating at off-peak periods. Among those few, successful
approaches to regulating minibuses have been those in which the many informal operators are
brought into the formal system, and routes are allocated to small operating companies on a
competitive basis, rather than licenses being given to individual vehicles to operate on a specific route.
However this requires a system of route planning and allocation and subsequent regulation that until
recently has been lacking in Cairo. However, the recent implementation of taxi concessions based on