Smart Mobility Adoption in Cairo: Barriers, Perceptions, and Policy Pathways

Cairo's rapid urban growth has intensified transportation challenges. Aligned with Egypt's Vision 2030 sustainability commitments, smart mobility initiatives, such as the Cairo Monorail and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), aim to modernize the transport system. However, adoption remains constrained by structural barriers, geographic proximity to infrastructure, affordability constraints, and institutional trust, which existing technology adoption frameworks do not adequately address. This study investigates adoption barriers through a stratified survey (N=300) during early system operations. The findings reveal a pronounced 70-percentage-point intention-action gap: 80% awareness but only 10% regular usage. Primary barriers were poor infrastructure accessibility (52%), limited awareness (30%), and cost (18%); however, geographic proximity to stations emerged as the strongest adoption moderator (r=0.54, explaining 29% of usage variance), substantially exceeding perceived usefulness (r=0.42, 18% variance). Income-stratified affordability operated as a critical constraint: formal-sector respondents perceived affordability favorably (M=3.4/5), while informal-sector respondents faced severe barriers (M=2.1/5), with costs consuming 20–30% of household income. Theoretically, this research extends the Technology Acceptance Model and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology by incorporating geographic proximity, affordability, and institutional trust as boundary conditions critical to Global South megacities, advancing understanding beyond high-income frameworks. Practically, successfully converting awareness into adoption requires sequenced structural interventions: geographic equity (infrastructure expansion to underserved districts), affordability restructuring (progressive pricing and subsidies), and governance integration (institutional coordination), which are substantially more consequential than technology design or messaging campaigns alone. This framework is directly transferable to comparable African megacities (Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasa) facing analogous challenges of urbanization, governance fragmentation, and infrastructure equity.