Urban transportation reform and the consolidation of a hybrid transport service in Peruvian cities

Over the past two decades, some Peruvian cities have sought to transform their urban transport systems. Whilst each city is unique, the systems that local governments have attempted to change usually feature hybrid services that combine centralised, planned routes with atomised, informal ones. The latter, characterised here as paratransit, are more demand-driven and usually permitted by local government. This chapter looks at some of the reasons for the shortcomings of urban transport reforms in Peru and presents a comparative analysis of cases in the capital, Lima, and a secondary city, Arequipa. By examining the configurations of transport service provision, it finds that urban transport reforms have faced serious problems in both cities. Whilst there are some differences between them, in both Lima and Arequipa, the lack of mobility planning has shaped a service delivery configuration that depends upon reaching a certain network size, but insufficient road infrastructure and incomplete route provision have led to the prevalence of demand-driven services, that is, paratransit.