Fares, Public Transport, and Inequality: The Governance of Bus Prices in Latin American Megacities | Ivan Souza Viera (Postdoctoral Researcher, National Autonomous University of Mexico)
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In Latin America, rising living costs have intensified pressure on urban households, particularly in megacities marked by persistent inequality. Because transportation is often the second-largest household expense, public transport policy plays a crucial role in shaping urban accessibility and social inclusion. Yet despite confronting similar challenges, cities in the region have adopted distinct institutional and political arrangements for governing fares, resulting in stark differences in affordability and redistribution for everyday public transport users.
This paper examines bus fare governance in São Paulo and Mexico City, two cities that have adopted different approaches to the fare-setting process. São Paulo has expanded affordability through centralized management, cross-subsidies, and extensive exemptions and discounts. Mexico City, by contrast, often highlights its “cheapest fare in the country,” yet its fragmented system requires users to combine multiple modes and pay separate fares, generating regressive and less affordable outcomes. I argue that the divergence in bus fare policy can be explained by the historical and political development of the bus sector in each city and the institutional legacies these trajectories produced. Using a comparative historical approach, the paper shows how these legacies have shaped the parameters of contemporary fare governance, including the policy instruments available to influence fare-setting processes. The analysis draws on official documents, policy reports, fieldwork observations, and several interviews with key stakeholders.
Ivan Souza Vieira is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Social Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (IIS-UNAM). He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico, as well as an MA in Political Science and a BA in Social Sciences from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil.
His research sits at the intersection of comparative politics, urban studies, and political economy, with a particular emphasis on cities in the Global South. His current project examines long-term disparities in urban bus service provision, tracing how affordability and service quality have evolved over the past century in Latin America’s megacities. Ivan’s work has appeared in leading journals such as Urban Affairs Review, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.