Transport expenditure and affordability: The cost of being mobile

Measuring and understanding the transport expenditure patterns of households and individuals is critically important for formulating pro-poor transport policies, as well as for monitoring their effectiveness. This paper reviews evidence on transport expenditure and affordability in South Africa, focusing especially on low-income and mobility constrained persons. The results indicate that a person's location along the urban–rural continuum significantly affects both their transport expenditure levels and the perceived severity of their transport affordability problems. Public transport users in displaced urban settlements and isolated deep rural locations and medium-income car commuters in suburbs and urban townships face the highest transport expenditure and affordability problems. Disabled and elderly people were found to have similar expenditure patterns and perceptions as travellers at large. Spatially targeted interventions in both transport supply and land use policy are suggested to address transport affordability problems in South Africa.