/UD4_wk3_A1_1IntroEN_Jodar

CMIM / UD4

Barcelona Workshop 17-20 October 2011

What Tools to Accompany the Evolutions of Urban Mobility in the Mediterranean?

Governance, Planning, Financing.

Proposal

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October 18th

Governance of Urban Transport in the Mediterranean

Thierry Gouin (Certu) Thierry.gouin@developpement-durable.gouv.fr Gabriel Jodar (MedcitĂŠs) g.jodar@forma-plan.com

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Introductory Session: The challenges of governance Public transport is a service : o Proposed by a public authority o To the citizen o Implemented by an operator The challenges of governance : What are the prerequisites on the three components and on their relationships to ensure that all work?

Session 1 What Public Authorities ?

Project Owner

Contractualization

Concertation Public Transport Citizen

Operator Regulation Users’ rights Session 2 What operators ?

What contracts ?

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Session 3 What participation of the citizens to the definition and implementation of urban transport policies?

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Session 1 : Organization, coordination, regulation… What authorities to implement and support urban transport policies?

Urban transport are a local issue and, for this reason, it is necessary to deal with them locally.

A public policy for the organization of urban mobility has to be implemented at the level of the physical territory concerned by urban travel.

Depending on the degree of decentralization of the political power, the institutions able to implement and support those public policies will vary significantly from a country to another: local authorities (municipal or regional level), deconcentrated state, or even central state.

In addition, urban transport are not limited to public transport even if public transport are one of their structural elements.

Public transport include all modes and all control or regulation tools allowing the achievement of urban mobility: two-wheels, motorized or not, automobile, taxis, organized or informal public transportation, parking, traffic management, traffic police...

Their good organization therefore calls to gather the political responsibilities, but also the financial means and the technical expertise necessary to implement them.

• Who should implement and support the urban transport policy?

• What is a « good » Urban Transport Authority?

• What lines of work offer to Mediterranean cities (elected people or technicians) who want to create or develop their Urban Transport Authority?

• What are the important questions to ask (institutions, territory, skills, decision-making levels ...)?

• What are the possible answers and the conditions of their implementation and success?

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Session 2 : Faced with changing operators, how to ensure an effective and coherent implementation of public transport service?

The range of operators that may intervene in the Mediterranean cities to perform transportation services at the request of the organizing authorities is very wide: from the individual and/or informal entrepreneur to the multinational transport group capable of taking over an entire network (operation and investment), through the local or national public company and the private company operating buses or coaches.

The local private operators have long intervened in competition with each other and / or public companies, at their own risk generally.

The implementation of comprehensive transport policies encourages now to make them intervene in complementarity, in the framework of contracts clearly defining their respective roles and the objectives assigned to them by the public authority, possibly through the payment of a financial compensation for public service obligations.

This evolution can not be brutal and the profession as a whole must be accompanied to meet the expectations of the transport organizing authority.

• How to develop the informal sector to make it intervene as an operator at the service of the public authority?

• How to establish a culture of contract?

• How to measure the performances of the companies? Criteria? Indicators?

• How to improve the perfomances of the companies? Training?

• Does competition ensure the improvement of the performances of the urban transport operators?

• Is it relevant to promote the association of local operators with experienced international operators?

• How to ensure complementarity of the different operators?

• What does the Organising Authority need to ensure an effective monitoring of the activity of its operators?

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Session 3 : Citizen, taxpayer, user, customer: how to involve the people in the definition and implementation of urban transport policies?

At the origine of the changes that are underway in some countries of the south shore of the Mediterranean, there is often the feeling, for the people, that they are not involved in decisionmaking process and that their real needs are neglected by a state which is distant, rigid, and often corrupted.

This is certainly true in particular with respect to the urban transport sector.

• What about the participation of the people in the development and implementation of urban transport policies, in both North and South of the Mediterranean?

• How to consult the people about a local or national policy or about an urban transport project (eg France: public debate, public inquiries, Grenelle Environment ...)?

• How to involve the people in a reflection process, as well as other stakeholders (eg France: concertation about Urban Mobility Plans...)?

• How to involve citizens in the ongoing evaluation of the functioning and performance of the transport service (eg France: Line Committees for Regional Rail, Advisory Commissions for Local Public Services...)?

• How to adapt the concertation to the changing of the behaviors ("social networking" vs. "mass individualism")?

• Citizens, taxpayers, users, consumers, customers...: where to go?

• What role for the associations?

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