Travel and Transportation in Senegal

Video Transcript

“There are [a] few different [modes] of transportation. You have the taxi, the car-rapide, the bus, and the big bus. Start with the taxi, the taxi you can find them anywhere. You call them to stop if they are empty, they will stop or not. Usually they will if they have no people. Even sometimes they can stop, they will stop to see if they can take two people at the same time, if it’s feasible with them. Sometimes right now they’ll give you a business card because there are no companies that have all taxis. Most of the time some people own their own taxis. And they start making their own business cards, ‘if you need me, call me.’

"The bus is the bigger mode of transportation. It’s mainly in the suburbs, it has main stops, it doesn’t really alter the routing. Put it this way, the faster you want to go, the riskier it’s going to be for you. All these buses, they don’t have a schedule set of departure and arrival. Once they’re full up, they will move on. The van is a smaller version, the seats were taken and put extra seats to fill up more places. Like a fifteen-seater will fit up [to] twenty-five [people] the way they set up the vans.

"And finally the car-rapide, these are minivans or vans, also. They go on the fly, once they fill up, they go. You want to stop, you tap on the top of the van, and the guy will not stop, it will reduce speed so you will need to jump off. And if you need to get on, you need to do the same thing.”

In this video, A Senegalese expert discusses various modes of transportation in Senegal.