Urban transport networks: territories of the capital and BRT systems. A look on La Matanza, Metropolitan Buenos Aires

ANDREA GUTIERREZ (COORD.)

Cologne

Conferencia; Global Conference on Economic Geography 2018; 2018

Universität Zu Köln

During the last two decades, the urban transport describes a change of paradigm, usually called as the "mobility turn". This change involves referential concepts, such as sustainability, and equity -as a goal of public policies- climbs within a rights approach framework. Under this paradigm, one of the most adopted policies for urban transport is the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), a Latin America innovation, exported for the world. There are several studies on this but still is difficult have economic analysis, specially based on Political Economy. The objective of this proposal is having a look of the last BRT?and the first at metropolitan scale- of Buenos Aires Region, that connect the Buenos Aires City whit La Matanza (its largest municipality), tacking to account the bus companies that offers public transport on it, and put them in the context of the La Matanza´s bus transport network. The methodology uses official data for diagnosis the economic performance of the network, considering the criteria of public regulation to measure enterprises (according to lines) and considering the property of capital. The results show that the regulation subregister the economic performance of the bus companies and allows an unequal appropriation of benefits of the BRT system and reflect on the effects for public policy to improve the coverage of the network, a significant issue for sustainability and equity in areas with deficits on accessibility and poverty.