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Box 3.13 The Four Pillars of Sustainable Urban Transportation Institutions
Diffi cult institutional issues often include planning, physical and operational integration, public transportation reform, and fare policies (including subsidies). At a basic level, city transportation institutions create forums for discussion and coordination among road planners, economic planners, public transportation operators, traffi c management offi cials, and police. In China, many cities establish leading groups chaired by city offi cials. At an advanced level, transportation institutions may represent forums for joint decision making and priority setting across multiple jurisdictions and multiple modes. Some good examples of this include London (Transport for London), Madrid (Consorcio de Madrid), Paris (STIF, the organizing authority for public transport in Ile-de-France), Singapore (Land Transport Authority), and Vancouver (TransLink). Good examples also exist in emerging countries. Box 3.13 summarizes the essential pillars of sustainable transportation institutions based on international experience in Latin America and other regions.
Ideally, there should be one metropolitan authority overseeing all transportation issues and modes, particularly in regions with multiple jurisdictions. This authority should plan multiple modes, set priorities, and coordinate decisions on investments, taking into account land and environmental plans and the concerns of the public, civil society, and private sectors. The authority should oversee strategic policies and the management of modes, including parking, taxis, public transportation, highways, and arterial roads. The regulation and reform of public transportation are challenging because they must balance the roles of the public and private sectors and respond to local conditions. An excerpt from a recent World Bank operational guide illustrates the challenges:
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Institutional approaches to providing public transport services range from a single publicly owned monopoly operator at one extreme, to numerous weakly regulated or unregulated small-scale, privately owned providers at the other. In some cities a range of approaches coexist. The fi rst extreme tends toward ineffi cient operations and uneconomic fares both of which map into high subsidies. It may also produce poor services, especially when the subsidy mechanism fails and operators are starved for funds. The other extreme may produce good services at zero public expenditure, but more often provides poor service with high accident and pollution costs. When this regulatory set-up is matched by low fares constrained by regulation or unfettered competition, service levels and quality fall and externalities rise. (World Bank 2008: 8).
BOX 3.13
Before fi nancing major urban transportation projects, decision makers should attempt to put in place the basic elements to ensure the long-term sustainability of the sector. Specifi cally, policy makers should incorporate a four-point agenda into any urban transportation strategy: 1. Create a regional transportation coordination commission in charge of coordinating policies among federal, state, and municipal governments, giving highest priority to major urban transportation investments in the metropolitan region and promoting modal integration. This will help improve the sector’s economic effi ciency and long-term sustainability. 2. Adopt a strategy for integrated land use, urban transportation, and air quality that provides a framework for community leaders and decision makers to evaluate future urban transportation investments and policies.
3. Enact into law formal fi nancing mechanisms to ensure that the long-run variable costs of urban transportation systems are covered by operating and nonoperating revenues and by appropriate user charges. 4. Promote private sector participation in the operation, maintenance, and construction of urban transportation systems to lessen the fi nancial burden on government (through, for example, concessions or management contracts).
Source: Adapted from Rebelo (1996).
The design of systems, technologies, and spatial plans should be driven by current or near-term transportation demand and a longer-term
