Abstract:

The "last mile" in transportation refers to the final leg of a person's journey, the connection between mass transit or long-haul transportation and the user's ultimate destination. Within the context of education, this represents the student's final commute to school and the return trip home.

In highly marginalized communities or areas with limited accessibility, such as the outskirts of large cities, the absence of integrated transportation systems can pose a significant challenge and barrier to accessing educational opportunities, with substantial negative consequences for an individual's personal and professional development.
This study aims to analyze the social costs associated with a last-mile public transportation system operating in Cuautepec, Mexico City, and their impact on individuals who rely on it to access educational services.

The methodology employed a Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA), which involves the following steps:
1. defining the problem,
2. identifying and categorizing costs and benefits,
3. calculating the values of these categories, and
4. analyzing the costs against the benefits to formulate a recommendation.

The findings indicate that while an informal last-mile public transportation system provides certain benefits for a specific group of people with distinct economic, demographic, and geographic characteristics, enabling them to access education, it also incurs significant social costs, including pollution, a constant state of insecurity, and poor driving practices.

In conclusion, the absence of effective last-mile mobility systems has various detrimental impacts on the populations they serve, placing significant pressure on society to address their needs, particularly access to education.

Keywords:

Education Access, cost-benefits, last mile transportation, mobility.