The 3rd Paratransit / Popular Transportation Day

at Transforming Transportation 2025

Join us in Washington D.C. on Thursday the 13th of March 2025 for the 3rd Paratransit/Popular Transport Day (P/PTD). This one day event happens immediately after Transforming Transportation 2025 (TT2025). The mini-conference focuses 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 in-person event happens on March 13, 2025 in Washington D.C. immediately after Transforming Transportation 2025 (TTDC2025).
Attendance to P/PTD is free but space is limited. Please note that the organizers are NOT offering any travel assistance or travel stipends, and WILL NOT assist with visas or other travel documentation.

IMPT: You will need to register for TTD2025 separately to attend the main conference in-person or online. Registering for P/PTD does not provide entrance to Transforming Transportation and vice-versa.

The 3rd P/PTD seeks to:

  1. Show progress in the global understanding of popular transportation, showcasing lessons learned from city/metropolitan integration projects;

  2. Strengthen the networks working to include, improve and integrate popular transport in policy, planning, investments;

  3. Begin to unlock global finance and funding sources; and,

  4. 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.

Attendance to P/PTD is free but space is limited. Please note that the organizers are NOT offering any travel assistance or travel stipends, and WILL NOT assist with visas or other travel documentation.

IMPT: You will need to register for TTD2025 separately to attend the main conference in-person or online. Registering for P/PTD does not provide entrance to Transforming Transportation and vice-versa.

3rd P/PTD Draft Agenda

(Schedule still subject to change. Exact start times to follow.)

Morning Sessions

Weaving Networks Panel - What we’re learning from efforts to connect institutional transportation and paratransit/ popular transportation (practice)

Two-Way Street Dialogue - Governments and paratransit/popular transport operators and workers: how do we move at the speed of trust? (people)

Afternoon Sessions

Bridges & Keys Roundtable - Unlocking mechanisms for investments in paratransit/popular transport micro- and small-enterprises (resources)

Street Smarts World Cafe - The latest research about paratransit/ popular transport ecosystems (research)