The combination of the removal of crucial subsidies on fuel amidst an economic crisis, the global fuel price hikes and the deficient actions to support the informal taxi and bus/vans network which are the sole provider of transport to the public has translated into ever increasing ride fares. In turn, residents find their ability to afford transport impeded, depressing their demand for it, and instigating the paralysis of public transportation whose sustainability depends on riders’ demand.
Fundamentally, not addressing these hurdles to affordable transportation left people in Lebanon with the risk of losing their right to mobility and in turn their access to socio-economic and political opportunities. While Ayman believed that justice will eventually be brought to people like him who have been hit hard by the economic crisis, a transport paralysis instead threatens distributive justice, further retarding achievement of broader social justice.
Why is the threat to mobility an issue of distributive justice?
Distributive justice deals with the fair distribution of benefits and burdens in society and has historically encompassed reducing inequality of opportunities. Whereas it had previously been treated as a non-spatial idea, more recently it has taken a spatial dimension through the recognition of accessibility (to services, spaces, labor markets, resources, etc.) as necessary for promoting equality of opportunities and for the development of further capabilities and choices (Pereira, 2017). As the main engine of accessibility, mobility plays an instrumental role in advancing equality of opportunities and, thus, justice, more broadly.
Historically, accessibility though mobility played a pivotal role in expanding Lebanese residents’ choices and opportunities (Kassir, 2010). In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the development of Beirut from a small town of six thousand people to an important trading city was largely driven by people’s enhanced mobility and accessibility. Increased mobility made it possible for people to migrate from the mountains to Beirut, to seek better economic opportunities and contribute to its economic and social development, while keeping their ties to the mountains. Moreover, in the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war, urban mobility was essential to reconnect a divided city as a mean to reinstate everyday urban life (Assaf, 2020).
Why is public transport key?
Public transport plays a central role in guaranteeing a fair and equitable distribution of mobility and accessibility. In the case of Lebanon, the informal public transit network was crucial to ensure the social and economic inclusivity of urban development and opportunities. “The car enabled the democratization of transport, since with the shared taxi cars system, the roads were accessible by people of all budgets,” wrote the late Samir Kassir in his book “Beirut”, widely praised as the definitive history of the city.
By the 1970’s, as the main provider of affordable transportation in Lebanon and guarantor of residents’ mobility and accessibility to opportunities, the informal network of service taxi cars and buses accounted for 80% of daily trips (UN Habitat& ESCWA, 2021).
Nonetheless, investment in the improvement of the informal public transport network had eventually been relegated to the end of authorities’ priorities. After the 15 years Lebanese civil war, the public transit network was largely absent from reconstruction efforts and most investments were instead concentrated in physical infrastructure with 24% of all the Center for Development and Reconstruction ’s (CDR) infrastructure expenditure from 1990 to 2017 spent on it (compared to 5% for electricity and 9% for education) (CDR, 2017). Significant investment in road networks along with the availability of low-interest car loans enforced the dominance of the cars on the streets of Lebanon, and by 2009, private cars accounted for 80% of daily trips (UN Habitat & ESCWA, 2021).
Importantly, the informal public transport, albeit neglected by authorities and presenting many deficiencies as a result, remained the sole provider of affordable transportation to residents in Lebanon. It largely served low- and middle-income residents who do not have access to other options for their daily commute including to their worksites (Moussawi, 2016).
The high car dependency led not only to high social costs including detrimental impact on the environment, congestion, noise and roads conditions, it also diverted financial support away from the existing public transit network. The high car usage in Lebanon, more than three times the world's median (Hijazi, 2021), implied that a significant portion of the US$3B spent annually by the government on subsidizing fuel (Reuters, 2021) in addition to the substantial investment on road infrastructure were consumed by private cars, rather than spent on improving the quality and efficiency of the informal public transit network for the usage of all.
As such, the existing economic and urban model rendered mobility highly accessible to those who owned their own private cars at the expense of the efficient mobility of those who cannot afford their own private cars. This legitimized a differentiation in people’s ability to access Lebanon’s spaces and resources and hindered equitable access to opportunities and distributive justice.
How has the current crisis worsened the situation?
The economic crisis only made things worth as the lack of attention given to public transportation in Lebanon in the thick of the fuel crisis, has resulted in transport ride fares becoming a heavy burden on commuters’ salaries, whose value plummeted as inflation in the country surpassed 200%. The ILO estimated that almost three-quarters of individuals in the country live in income vulnerability (Nassar, 2021), on less than LL706,050 per month, equivalent to less than one lift using the shared taxi car at the current rate of LL50,000. Meanwhile, as the inflation continues cutting the purchasing power of workers earning in the Lebanese currency, sustaining a private car has also become increasingly expensive to them.
In parallel drivers of shared transportation vehicles are finding it increasingly hard to cover their basic expenses given the stark increase in the cost of fuel (AP News, 2022). The inability of the market to stabilize at a ride fare that would ensure commuters ability to pay without compromising on drivers’ ability to make ends meet, threatens to paralyze the informal public transit network in Lebanon.
ESCWA estimated that in 2021, 82% of the Lebanese population lived in multidimensional poverty, which considers factors other than income, such as access to health, education and public utilities (ESCWA, 2021). The paralysis of the informal public transport network resulting from its sustained systematic neglect in policy responses will only worsen the situation through compounding the exclusion of a large proportion of people in Lebanon from access to resources and opportunities provided by mobility, including voting, and hindering their ability to improve their situations. What is worth is that the poor and the lower-middle class people most likely to see their purchasing power fall and experience the worse impacts of the crisis, are the ones most likely to feel the impact of the paralysis of public transport and suffer everyday restricted mobility. In this regard, failing to support and invest in the informal public transport in Lebanon reinforces social disparities and contributes to the uneven distribution of the harm from the crisis.
How to address the issue?
Measures to support, sustain and improve the informal public transit network are thus essential to safeguard people’s equitable mobility, access to opportunity and move the Lebanese society closer to distributive justice.
In the shorter term, official measures could include subsidies targeted at collective means of transport namely shared taxis and buses/vans, which will allow the market to stabilize at an affordable rate for riders and profitable rate for drivers.
In the longer term, UN Habitat, in the Guide for Mainstreaming Transport & Mobility in Lebanon’s National Urban Policy (UN Habitat, 2021), pushes for the development of a national transport plan to guide the development of the transport sector towards more sustainable, integrated and inclusive transport modes. The essentiality of a central regulatory authority responsible for planning, development and monitoring of the transport sector is also highlighted. Importantly, the guide pushes for the creation of institutional mechanisms that allow for citizen participation in urban transport planning, with mechanisms that account for the demands and needs of the public as well as for the work of NGOs and experts who have been actively lobbying for the improvement of public transport in Lebanon.
A just response to the crisis and approach to transport in Lebanon should not be about some people enjoying greater accessibility than others, but rather about minimizing inequality in opportunities and ensuring a fairer distribution of benefits and harms in the Lebanese society. In her book Infrastructures of Empire and Resistance, the American historian Deborah Cowen asked: “Could repairing infrastructure be a means of repairing political life more broadly?” It is worth asking if this could be the case in Lebanon.
References:
Pereira, R., Schwanen, T., and Banister, D. (2017). Distributive justice and equity in transportation. Transport Reviews.
Kassir, S. (2010). Beirut. University of California Press.
Assaf, C. (2020). Social Innovation: Utopia of (Re)shaping the Culture of Mobility in Beirut. Supervised by Pieter Van den Broeck and Christine Mady. Issuu
UN Habitat. (2021). Guide for Mainstreaming Transport & Mobility in Lebanon’s National Urban Policy
UN Habitat and ESCWA. (2021). State of the Lebanese Cities Governing Sustainable Cities Beyond Municipal Boundaries.
Reuters. (2021). Lebanese central bank effectively ends fuel subsidy
Council for Development and Reconstruction. (2017). Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) for the Bus Rapid Transit System between Tabarja and Beirut and Feeders Buses Services.
Moussawi, H. (2016). Claiming the right to the city through informal practices? The case of informal public transport in Beirut. Serie (iv-1a). International Conference Contested_Cities
Hijazi, S. (2021). Les transports collectifs, éternels sacrifiés du système libanais. L’Orient Le Jour.
Nassar, F., Hague, S., and Sayegh, W. (2021). Raising the Alarm: Pervasive Poverty and Vulnerability in Lebanon. The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS).
AP News. (2022). Lebanon’s taxi, bus and van drivers block roads in protest
ESCWA. (2021). Multidimensional poverty in Lebanon (2019-2021): Painful reality and uncertain prospects.
Cowen, D. (2017). Infrastructures of Empire and Resistance. Verso