Today, the cost of using them twice a day, five times a week, absorbs anything between 25% and 73% of the budget of those that fall in the lowest quintile of the per capita expenditure distribution. But only a few can afford to take tap-taps on a regular basis. With a one-hour trip in Port-au-Prince, they can, on average, access 27% of jobs. Traveling by tap-tap increases the opportunities people can reach.
Both cities fail in matching people with opportunities that correspond to their skills and aspirations.
The work done under the Urbanization Review estimated that only 42% and 40% in Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haïtien respectively travel beyond a 1km radius from their homes for work purposes. On average, an urban resident in Port-au-Prince that commutes by foot can only reach 12% of the jobs within 60 minutes and this share goes down as one moves away from the city center and toward the outskirts. And yet the economic opportunities they can reach after walking one hour remain quite limited, especially in comparison to the pool of jobs an urban area of 3.5 million people such as Port-au-Prince can offer. This means that they are forced to walk long distances to reach jobs, often slaloming between vendors and vehicles parked on the curb. The remaining 74% either walk everywhere or do not travel at all. In fact, only 26% of Haitians use any motorized vehicle on a regular basis.
At this time of the day, streets are filled with people walking to work or school, starting their long journeys early so they can arrive on time. But they are not busy with cars, since income levels in Haiti are still too low – Haiti ranks 200 among 216 countries on 2015 Gross National Income rankings published by the World Bank – and the colorful tap-taps remain unaffordable to most of the population. At 5am, when the sun has still not gone up, the streets of Port-au-Prince are already busy.
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