It is possible informal transportation moves more people in the world than all formal transportation modes combined and probably employs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people across the globe. Yet we know very little about these systems. Much of the insight remains with the people who use and work in informal transportation – people who may not share their experiences on mainstream platforms. 

Building on its priority for Research & Development (R&D) on informality, the Global Network for Popular Transportation (GNPT) and the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Accelerator Lab Network started this research to learn more about informal transportation, but also to learn about how we think about, process and address it.