A public bus in Paraguay.
The Asunción Metropolitan Area (AMA), Paraguay’s vibrant capital, is on the move and is undergoing significant changes. 34% of the country's population and 47% of the vehicle fleet are concentrated in its metropolitan area. With rapid population growth—an increase of 180% in 40 years— urban sprawl, and a rising number of vehicles on the roads, its transport infrastructure is under pressure. This has led to congestion, longer travel times, and higher pollution levels. Asunción is one of the few capital cities in Latin America without a rapid transit system but is actively thinking about options, including electric bus corridors, taking advantage of its clean, hydro-based electricity matrix.
To help the government in this process, the World Bank introduced innovative data-driven techniques to enhance public transport planning in Asunción, including General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) and mobile phone data (MPD, also known as 'call detail records').
You may wonder about what GTFS is: Imagine you have a big toy bus set with lots of tracks, stops, and buses. Now, let’s say you want to know when each bus will arrive at each stop, where the buses are going, and how long it will take to get to your destination. A GTFS dataset is like a big book that has all this information written down. It tells you the schedule of the buses, the routes they take, the stops they make, and other important details. This way, you can always know when and where to catch your bus.
By leveraging GTFS and MPD, policymakers can gain valuable insights into its transport dynamics. These modern tools provide a mapping of the metropolitan transportation network with unprecedented quality and far exceed the capabilities of traditional methods used in previous years. GTFS data provides a detailed map of the city's transit system, including schedules and geographic information. This data not only serves as input for trip planning tools for transport users, but it also allows for the identification of areas where transport services need improvement or expansion.
The World Bank supported Paraguay’s Vice Ministry of Transport in generating the first-ever GTFS dataset for AMA, which is now being incorporated into applications like Google Maps to offer efficient travel planning tools for public transport users.
While understanding the transport service supply is valuable, it becomes significantly more useful when combined with knowledge of how people move around the city (the demand). MPD offers a dynamic view of these travel patterns. By analyzing this data, origin-destination matrices were created, revealing the flow of people across different parts of Asunción. This approach provided a comprehensive picture of urban mobility, capturing travel patterns that traditional surveys might miss. For example, the 2021 AMA mobility survey reports barely 39% of the volume of trips captured through MPD. It is well documented that surveys tend to underestimate the total number of trips, off-peak trips, and shorter trips, to name a few.
The data collected across the AMA offers a rich and detailed picture of its transport dynamics. On a typical business day, the metropolitan area sees approximately eight million trips, which yields a number of trips per person slightly above that of cities such as Bogotá and comparable to Buenos Aires, based on comparable data source. A surprising finding from the analysis is that less than 7% are made by public transport.
With barely 15% of the trips corresponding to non-motorized transport (walking, cycling), an overwhelming 78% of all trips are made by car or motorcycle, thus contributing to an overloaded road network that was not designed to handle the current size of the vehicle fleet, under constant growth. This means that commuters –especially public transport users– spend hours and hours each week on their journeys. Although about half of all trips range between one and five kilometers, regardless of transport mode, more than 16% of all public transport trips exceed one hour in duration.
Using GTFS and MPD has provided valuable insights for public transport planning. For example, the Eusebio Ayala Avenue corridor, which concentrates one in six daily trips is one of the priority corridors for future mass transit investments. The corridor benefits from an extensive public transport supply, but the GTFS data and MPD analysis show that there is room for improvement in terms of service quality and efficiency.
For example, there are numerous overlaps and a lack of coordination between the routes. It is clear that the development of dedicated bus infrastructure, along with a reorganization of the lines and other improvements, could offer higher-quality public transportation for users in the area.
GTFS data reveals that there are 20 mapped bus routes that utilize the entire Eusebio Ayala Avenue corridor. In blue, the section of the PY02/Eusebio Ayala Corridor extending from Silvio Pettirossi (Asunción) to the UNA Campus (San Lorenzo); in orange, the bus routes that use all that corridor section.
The transformation of urban mobility in Asunción is just beginning. As the city evolves, the application of advanced data sources will pave the way for a smarter, more efficient public transport system. This experience serves as a testament to the power of data in shaping the future of urban mobility, and the World Bank transport team is increasingly more prepared to help cities around the world to achieve similar transformations.
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