Public and Private Transit: Evidence from Lagos

Daniel Björkegren; Alice Duhaut; Geetika Nagpal; Nick Tsivanidis

doi:10.3386/w33899

Public and Private Transit: Evidence from Lagos

Daniel Björkegren, Alice Duhaut, Geetika Nagpal & Nick Tsivanidis

Working Paper 33899

DOI 10.3386/w33899

Issue Date June 2025

Private minibuses dominate transport in many developing country cities. They serve 62% of trips in Lagos, the largest city in sub-Saharan Africa. We collect panel data to measure how private minibuses respond to the rollout of a new public bus network. When the government enters a route, minibuses depart less frequently, driver profits fall, and drivers switch to connected routes, reducing prices. We develop a custom app to estimate how commuters trade off prices and wait times in an RCT. The private response harms commuters on treated routes, who wait longer, but benefits those on connected routes, who face only lower prices. Overall, 10% of the commuter welfare gains of building the public transit system arise from the response of private transit. Drivers lose welfare equal to half of the commuter gains.

We thank many colleagues and seminar participants for helpful comments and discussions, and many research assistants for excellent work. This work would not have been possible without the tireless work of field managers Nura Sambo Umar and Segun Adebamiji. This paper is a product of the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/the World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the World Bank, the Executive Directors of the World Bank, the governments they represent, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. This work was supported by the World Bank’s Research Support Budget, the World Bank Knowledge for Change Programme, the European Union’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) and the UK International Development from the UK government under the World Bank’s Umbrella Facility for Impact Evaluation, the Clausen Center at UC Berkeley, IGC, J-PAL King Climate Action Initiative, the Brown University Seed Fund, the Weiss Fund, and STEG. The experimental portion of this project was preregistered in the AEA RCT registry (AEARCTR-0010283).
MARC RIS BibTeΧ
- randomized controlled trials registry entry

Public and Private Transit: Evidence from Lagos

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