The Streets of Dakar: Places for Negotiating Passenger Transport Services

Résumé 0

The situation of city passenger transport in Dakar is a strong reflection of the law of a deregulated market. In the face of growing demand for urban mobility, a diverse supply is emerging and evolving. The public passenger transport system is in an obvious state of collapse. In this context, consolidation of transport services offered by small-scale private operators in Dakar represents a sizeable potential for economic gain, the fruit of daily negotiations between professionals, State agents and and transport users. Study of the transport system by examining the places where it is generated helps understand the governing principles. Their deployment over the whole of the city and its suburbs and the multiplicity of the people involved and economic interests derived from passenger transport makes it worthwhile to observe them. The emergence of public places, which have become major points in the private-sector mass-transport network, results from the decisions made by the professional operators or from the various demands expressed by their urban users. These places, strategic spaces in their role as links in the city service network, also have their emblematic figures, the coxeurs or touts. The setting-up of a geographical information system at transport points allows analysis not only of the vitality of the private transport sector, but also the geographical distribution of the supply and social and spatial inequality of access to transport that is deepening in the Dakar agglomeration