What sub-Saharan Africa can teach San Francisco: mass transit doesn't have to mean massive government spending.

• Author: Zachary, G. Pascal
• Position: Travel narrative

IN THE PROVINCIAL capital of Mhale, in eastern Uganda, it's not uncommon to start your morning commute riding shotgun on a bicycle. I visited this metropolis of more than 400,000 people frequently in the late 2000s, and I often began my day as a passenger in the tacked-on second seat of one of these bodas, wheeling from my hotel to a place on the other edge of town where shared taxis congregated. Three other travelers and I would pile into one of these taxis for a 20-minute ride down a main road, and then I would hop out and hail another boda for the final mile of my journey.

Once overwhelmingly rural, Africa is urbanizing at a faster rate than any other region on the planet. With the world's lowest rates of automobile ownership, urban Africans also have the world's greatest demand for mass transit. And they are meeting their own needs with enterprise and creativity, largely fueled by private resources. The successes of the continent's ad hoc urban transit systems are partly due to government neglect. Unable to keep pace with growth, governments are simply staying out of the way and letting private operators assemble inexpensive networks of buses and taxis that can adapt quickly to shifting consumer needs.

These days, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where a typical commute is much less efficient and dramatically more expensive than my morning rides in Uganda. This wealthy and sophisticated metropolitan area--home to an underground train running beneath a body of water, some of the longest bridges in the nation, and a massive highway system--has much to learn about mass transit from the poorest part of the word.

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Taking the Tro Tro

In Accra, Ghana, where I lived and worked in the early 2000s, the standard way of commuting is to board a tro tro, a minivan that has been reconfigured to seat about 16 people. The van is staffed by a driver and a fare collector. It stops at consistent pickup spots, but you can also hail one as it passes by. A short commute costs as little as 10 to 25 cents. All the vans are privately owned; more often than not, drivers and fare collectors are employees of the owners. (Firm data on how many are owners--and on African transit systems in general, from ridership to costs to technical challenges--is hard to come by.)

Because they don't operate on a fixed schedule but tend to walt until they collect a nearly full load before departing, the vans are rarely empty. Because they are inexpensive to operate, the vans are ubiquitous. Because there are so many on the major roads in a city, walt times are very short--usually less than five minutes, even on weekends.

Private cars, sometimes called bush taxis, operate in parallel with the minivans. The taxis link Accra with nearby cities and take passengers places within the city, usually at a cost of about $1 a ride (about half a day's...