Transport tariff hiking: the case of public transport fare between Addis Ababa and Woliso town

Public transport is one of the public utilities offered to the general public directly by the government or through private sector participation. In either scenario, public transport should be subject to government control and stringent regulation in terms of pricing and service nature. The general argument is that the rates charged must be acceptable in the eyes of regulators, providers, and the general public. Using a critical postmodern research methodology and a critical and descriptive research design, this research aimed to critically analyze the factors leading to the spiraling of public transportation rates between Addis Ababa and Woliso. Key informants and passengers were selected using purposeful and snowball sampling procedures. The research revealed that, despite the government's efforts to impose tariffs and offer subsidies to public transport providers, the government's policy involvement failed to control public transport price hikes. Some of the obstacles that public transport services encounter in the execution of government pricing policy includes a lack of institutional linkage and coordination between multiple sites of delivery and players. Public transport pricing policy continues to be one of the principal policy concerns and sources of controversy in the case study and Ethiopia generally. Since the fare or price charged to users has been more than government tariff, the government's public transport tariff has remained hypothetical. This suggests the existence of a critical contest between the government in charge of setting the tariff and overseeing its implementation and the public transport providers in the case study.