Relation with the Decision Makers (Lobbying)

Assessment of the lobbying activity of paratransit drivers is required. Especially, in developed country cases there is a misunderstanding that paratransit operators are unable to create a lobby, which has an impact on decision making process. The idea of paratransit operators not having the ability to create a lobbying could be tested with the United States example. As mentioned before, jitneys in the US served between the years 1914-1916 and they wounded up by the powerful tram companies after a while. Actually, powerful, privately owned structure of “other” transportation modes disabled the strengthening of jitneys in the US example (Grava, 2003, 235-236; Tekeli & Okyay, 1981, 29). However, the difference between developed countries like the US and the developing countries distinguishes itself in the operation period. While the US example experienced the jitneys only in a short time, most of the developing country transportation networks have been nourished dominantly by paratransit. As they are the main public transport providers in many of

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the developing country cities, any competition introduced by the municipality with the paratransit is generally opposed and prevented by their organizations. In the Turkish example, the plate ownership given to the operators without time limitation created an irrevocable privilege for these people (Kılınçaslan, 2012, 313). In Mexico City, as the governments are unable to regulate paratransit sectors, the members of the sector created a self-operating mechanism:

In light of the difficulties in enforcing paratransit regulations and given the enormity of Mexico City's paratransit sector; the emergence of pro-active route associations was inevitable. Each of the more than 100 peseros and minibus routes in the Federal District is today represented by a route association. Additionally, there are fifteen umbrella organizations that actively lobby for the interests of the paratransit industry in general and their constituent route associations specifically. Overall, then a hierarchical organization structure has evolved to administer, self-police, and promote the city's hierarchy of paratransit services (Cervero, 1998, 394).

Besides, an important point is about their organizational structure. In the previous section it was mentioned that there is a horizontal organization rather than a vertical organization between owner/operators of paratransit. In many examples, the license plates are quite expensive and as there is a horizontal organization, it is not possible to compensate any low-profit operation with the surplus from the other operations and that makes it very difficult to negotiate with the operators as well. For example, in Mexico City district authorities do not have the resources to enforce rules among some 100,000 licensed paratransit operators in the city, much less the tens of thousands of unlicensed ones (Cervero, 1998, 393). That is why; the central government managed the process at first.

Yet, there is an inevitable evolution of informal sector from the informal foundation to a formal, modern foundation. Two ways can be followed during this process: to leave it to the historical process or to speed up this evolution. In either of the cases, the fact that should not be forgotten is that informal sector is a societal issue, which is revealed by the unbalanced societal structure (Işık & Pınarcıoğlu, 2013, 51). For the first choice, it could be said that car producers are quite influential on society and maybe with rapidly increasing car ownership rates they will meet the mobility needs

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of the middle-income groups, which will lead to the removal of paratransit. However, Southern American examples Por Puestos (jitneys) still continue their existence (Alpöge, 1975 cited in Tekeli & Okyay, 1981) . The author of this study prefers to focus on the second option. Considering the lobbying connections of paratransit operators, it is clear that paratransit or taxi artisans could antagonize the policies, affect them in a significant manner, and hence hinder their effective implementation.

As Kılınçaslan states for the case of Turkey, the power of this group, which is organized and mostly represented at the municipality level, and the fact that a certain section of the society has been living off from this sector for 70 years should be considered well by transportation planners.

In most countries, government authorities have cited problems with unsafe vehicles and drivers in justifying their efforts to regulate and "formalize" paratransit operations. However, most of the time, these efforts have been limited by ignorance on the part of regulatory authorities and mistrust between authorities and operators (Schalekamp, Mfinanga, Wilkinson, and Behrens, 2009 cited in Toker-Özkurt, 2012, 79). As a successful example, in Mexico;

Regional transportation planning authority has jurisdiction over the seven municipalities and incorporated areas in the outlying suburbs. These organizations control market entry by issuing permits and licenses. They also negotiate permitted routes of operation, set tariffs, and maintain performance standard (e.g., driver and vehicle fitness). Within these limitations, however, private operators are free to operate as they choose, including the hours they work and schedules they maintain. Because of purported oversupply of minibuses, the Federal District has not issued new paratransit permits for many years (Cervero, 1998, 393).

Definitely, there are still conflicts between experts even in the best cases in terms of integration. For example, in the Mexico example –which is one of the most successful examples in terms of integration of variety of transportation systems- there was an attempt to replace colectivos and minibuses with buses in the late 1990s. At the end, as in other country examples, under the modernization title, removal of the inferior and obsolete paratransit mode is necessary. However, the

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lobbying activity of the paratransit operators should be managed by the authorities to eliminate the negative externalities during the modernization process.