Why Public Transport Thrives in Some Cities and Fails Miserably in Others

Imagine a city where public transport is so efficient, you could set your watch by the bus arrivals. Now, contrast that with a city where catching a bus feels like playing a game of chance. While some urban centers boast seamless transit systems, others leave commuters perpetually frustrated.

Urban Contrast: The juxtaposition of a sleek, elevated train zooming through an efficient cityscape on the left, and a congested avenue of matatus and buses on the right.

Why the wild difference? Let’s break public transport down into six recurring problems - then ride along to the solutions that thriving systems have already road-tested.

1. Sprawl vs. Smart Density

Problem - The 40-mile latte run

Los Angeles stretches over 4 000 km² of cul-de-sacs and freeways. Even after notching 311 million boardings in 2024, an 8 % bump, Metro still serves a population that can’t walk to a stop without sunscreen and a podcast queue.

Solution - Pack the people, shrink the distances

Singapore compresses 5.9 million residents into an area smaller than LA’s fire district. Its rail grid already records 3.41 million MRT trips a day, with buses adding 3.84 million more. Result: a vehicle you can board within a 10-minute walk almost anywhere on the island. Nairobi sits awkwardly in the middle - relatively dense, yet strung out along radial highways designed in the 1960s. When traffic stalls, it takes 26 minutes to crawl 10 km, ranking the city 14th-worst globally for congestion. Until land-use policy lines up with transport corridors, every new bus lane is just a Band-Aid.

Take-away: Pack people tightly and the network thrives; spread them thin and the operating bill balloons.

2. Funding Droughts

Problem - Begging for bus fare

Kenya conceived its first BRT line in 2008. The money arrived - €320 million for Line 3 - only in late 2024, after a relay race of feasibility studies and cancelled tenders. Meanwhile, privately run matatus keep the city moving but hike fares whenever fuel prices spike.

Solution - Treat transit like electricity, not a bake sale

Zurich cordons off roughly 20 % of street space for trams and buses, and its 2040 strategy unlocks CHF 2.5 billion for new lines plus a citywide mobility app. Stable, multi-decade funding lets planners hire staff, buy vehicles in bulk, and promise riders that today’s timetable will still exist next year. Singapore goes further: Parliament reviews fares annually against a formula tied to wages and energy costs, keeping the poorest households’ transport burden near the single digits - well below global affordability thresholds.

Take-away: Transit is a utility; treat it like electricity, not a weekend bake sale.

3. Fragmented Tickets & Balkanised Agencies

Problem - Pay three times, queue four

Nairobi commuters juggle cash fares collected through a bus window, then hand over another note for the connecting matatu. Londoners, by contrast, can glide from Tube to bus to Overground with a single tap, but even there, total underground trips remained 12 % below 2019 in 2023, proving frictionless payment isn’t a cure-all.

Solution - One pass, one app, zero mental load

Curitiba’s BRT shows that rubber tyres can feel as seamless as rail: off-board payment, platform-level boarding, and integrated stations power about 2 million daily passengers. Singapore has already folded bike-share and e-scooters into a MaaS pilot so riders can plan, book, and pay for multi-modal trips in one screen. Nairobi’s new BRT lanes are slated to launch with cashless gates; if the city also persuades matatu owners to plug into the same back-end, the transfer penalty evaporates overnight.

4. Safety, Reliability & Trust

Problem - Feeling unsafe is as bad as being late

Matatus advertise with neon graffiti and sub-woofers, but lax enforcement means overloading, sudden lane-changes, and occasional fiery headlines. That keeps middle-class Kenyans in their cars even when traffic is soul-crushing. Los Angeles discovered the perception gap the hard way during the pandemic.

Solution - Uniformed human beings (not just cameras)

Since LA deployed ≈350 green-jacket “ambassadors”, 63 % of surveyed riders say they feel safer, coinciding with 23 months of ridership growth. Zurich solves the same trust problem with the opposite vibe, clock-work punctuality. When a tram promises 08 : 03, it leaves at 08 : 03, building a social contract riders can set their watches by.

5. Data Blindness

Problem – The bus is invisible until it’s gone

Half of Nairobi’s residents now own a smartphone - penetration hit ≈50 % in 2024 - yet official route maps are folklore passed down by touts.  When passengers can’t see service in real time, they assume it doesn’t exist.

Solution - Publish Everything

UITP’s 2024 survey found 83 % of operators expected ridership growth precisely because data dashboards let them adapt schedules to hybrid-work patterns on the fly. Cities that open their AVL feeds (looking at you, Singapore and London) spawn ecosystems of trip-planners, fare calculators, and third-party alerts, all of which make waiting feel shorter and transfers safer.

6. Crisis Resilience

Problem - Stuck in yesterday’s timetable

Pandemic-era remote work torpedoed five-day commuting peaks. Systems that clung to the old rush-hour model bled riders; London still sits 9-15 % below 2019 volumes across key modes.

Solution - Pivot fast, bundle benefits

Curitiba trimmed headways on busy trunk lines while adding off-peak discounts; many corridors now exceed pre-Covid ridership. Singapore ties climate targets, congestion charges, and network extensions into a single policy package - if fuel prices surge, people already have a carbon-priced, frequent alternative.

Kenya’s Crossroads Moment

• Modal share: Public transport already carries 46 % of urban trips in Nairobi - a strong baseline.

• Pain point: 70 % of the city’s 4.5 million daily commuters rely on matatus that contribute outsized emissions and road deaths.

• Opportunity: BRT Line 3’s funding is secure; smartphone uptake is climbing; and policy makers can leapfrog legacy mistakes by mandating cashless, GPS-tracked fleets from day one.

Success, however, hinges on integrating land-use (zoning mid-rise housing near stations), enforcing bus-only lanes, and offering matatu owners a financial stake - otherwise the shiny new stations become parking lots.

Cheat-Sheet for Any Mayor Losing Sleep over Traffic

Problem	Quick Win	Long Game
Sprawl & distance	Bus-only lanes on existing corridors	Align zoning with transit (TOD incentives)
Funding drought	Earmark a slice of fuel tax for operations	Multi-year capital plan with ring-fenced revenue
Fragmented fares	Introduce contactless, flat-fare transfers	Full MaaS platform spanning all modes
Safety worries	Deploy unarmed ambassadors	Embed reliability KPIs and publish them
Data gaps	Release live vehicle locations	Use analytics to redesign the network quarterly
Crisis shocks	Temporary off-peak fare cuts	Bake resilience into climate and equity policy

Final Stop: Move Minds, Not Just Bodies

Great transit is no happy accident. It is the sum of political courage (stable funding), urban humility (less space for cars), and relentless user empathy (real-time info, safe platforms). Cities that get those ingredients right - Singapore, Zurich, Curitiba - prove you don’t need teleportation to make commuting painless.

If your daily ride still feels like a coal-rolling fever dream, remember: the fix isn’t a bigger highway. It’s a bus you want to board - or better yet, one you don’t even think about because it just works.