The present rapid urban growth of cities from developing countries causes negative externalities such as
lagging infrastructure development. In combination with rapidly rising motorized vehicle use this leads
to severe traffic congestion affecting the mobility of the urban residents. Therefore many urban governments
are planning to improve their transport and mobility situations with mass rapid transit systems of
which a bus rapid transit (BRT) is a rather easy system to implement at reasonable costs. However, due to
high urban inequalities the effects of urban traffic and potential improvements of the urban transport
system for the diverse group of urban residents can differ significantly. In our case study Kampala
(Uganda) four main groups were identified through cluster analysis of socio-economic and residential
data gathered through interviews: extreme poor, poor, middle income and rich. Each group experiences
a different mobility with the extreme poor being the most vulnerable group. The planned BRT system
aims to decrease the average travel time but risks to exclude the lowest income class since not enough
attention is paid to the affordability of the system to all residents. Therefore we argue for a policy that
works from bottom up and pays attention to the internal diversity of the population.