Short of building a respectable road network--which won't happen in the next decade--there are many things an entrepreneur could do to profit from the status quo. One of such solutions is a transportation system that can assure certitude of departure time. If a transport company could ensure that there will be a bus at a certain bus stop every half-hour, most passengers would be willing to queue for such a service. This would reduce the chaos at all such bus stops where, currently, the stronger and more unruly passengers reckon that it is not in their interest to queue as they can overpower other rowdies for limited spots in the trotros. Over time, as the company builds trust, some passengers would be willing to purchase advance tickets to patronise such a service, yielding a sustainable business.
Another area of uncertainty that exists in the current market is taxi fares for the so-called dropping. Taxi drivers exploit their information advantage much to the detriment of passengers, leaving most of them unwilling to take the taxis except as a last resort. What if there were a time and distance tracker installed in all taxis that would reliably determine what the fare should be for a given distance and a given time, and perhaps, even a given time of day? Certainly, drivers would make less money, even though they would still make a profit. The money they would lose would go back to the passengers. Again, our budding entrepreneur just has to paste bold stickers on his taxis to brand them as "the taxis that charge fairly," in order to distinguish himself from the rest.
I envisage that, over time, even taxi drivers who don't belong to his franchise would enlist to get certified by his company as most passengers would choose the "fair" taxis over the others, again, yielding a sustainable business.
These ideas are straightforward and don't cost much to implement: anybody who owns multiple taxis or trotros could start. Let's see how long it takes for them to do so.
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