Articles

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between the formal (governance established in law) and informal institutions (governance not established in law) that underpin the planning, operation and improvement of local and regional public transport, by using case studies of four countries: Britain (more specifically England, outside London); the Netherlands; Germany; and Sweden. The paper uses a framework drawn from the literature on institutional change to analyse the interplay between the formal governance structures and the other actors and organisations that have an influence on public transport, the formal and informal relationships between them, and how informal institutions emerge to increase the effectiveness with which public transport is delivered. By selecting countries with some similarities in institutional structure, it is possible to explore how relationships can differ even within a relatively similar overall framework for public transport. Drawing on qualitative research with actors in the different countries, the research explores how informal institutions help actors negotiate the constraints of formal, statutory institutions. Findings reveal that informal institutions smooth the critical interfaces where formal institutions were producing sub-optimal public transport, thus providing evidence that the two modes of governance are, in fact, highly complementary.

The 2014 Swedish National infrastructure plan allocated funds to implement a “Regional Superbus concept”. The concept involves the upgrading a number of existing regional express bus services to make them function as an alternative to investing in regional rail. The Regional superbus concept is an attempt to adapt the BRT planning philosophy to the regional scale and the context of the region it serves. The concept was developed by a constellation of representatives of different public organisations in the Skåne region and the process required collaboration to handle a number of critical challenges. The aim of the study is to examine how collaboration worked in the concept development phase, and identfiy lessons for implementing the concept elsewhere. An interview study with key actors is analysed with a theoretical framework on collaborative governance. The results identifies a number of challenges such as: formal planning system characteristics earmarking money for specific organizational budgets; the closed concept development process in order to reach consensus in the concept development group; the lack of “best practice” experiences and reaching agreement about problem definitions. Lessons for future implementation includes: ensure an open and transparent process involving public participation; the need for an understanding of the effects of different aspects of the concept; the importance of working with all aspects of the concept and to be aware that key elements of the concept aimed to improve travel time and comfort require controversial decisions concerning e.g. bus stop removal and unconventional bus priority measures.

This paper investigates where and how sustainable transport goals are translated into public transport planning and operations. The case where this is explored is the Regional Public Transport Authority (RPTA) in Stockholm, Sweden. By drawing upon recent discussions on policy translation and political–administrative relationships, sustainable transport is found to be translated in two different collaborative spaces in the RTPA. In the market side of the authority, which is mainly preoccupied with procurement of traffic and compliance issues, sustainable transport is translated into quantitative goals (including biofuels, emissions, noise, etc.) and mechanically reproduced from the politicians via the civil servants to the private operators. In the planning side of the authority, sustainability measurements have been hard to quantify and the challenge to integrate land-use and transport planning is resolved in an organic manner, in specific projects, between the strategic transport planners in the RPTA and the land-use planners in the municipalities, at a distance from the politicians’ involvement. Throughout the RPTA, sustainable transport has broadened to also include social sustainability, although this has been difficult to translate into quantitative measurements, which is the desired mode of governance by the politicians.

We investigate the opportunities and challenges of the forth wave of digitalization, also referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), with respect to public transport and how it can support sustainable development of society. Environmental, economical, and social perspectives are considered through analysis of the existing literature and explorative studies. We conclude that there are great opportunities for both transport operators and planners, as well as for the travelers. We describe and analyze a number of concrete opportunities for each of these actors. However, in order to realize these opportunities, there are also a number of challenges that needs to be addressed. There are both technical challenges, such as data collection issues, interoperability, scalability and information security, and non-technical challenges such as business models, usability, privacy issues, and deployment.

The dominating form of analysis in the transport sector is cost–benefit analysis (CBA). This study investigates the purpose and use of an alternative analysis intended to complement CBA in the Swedish high-speed rail project. According to CBA calculations, the project is heavily unprofitable. While some politicians called for project termination, the project leadership launched an alternative benefit analysis that calculated only benefits (disregarding costs). This was intended to be a basis for decision making on station localization and financing agreements, but it was quickly downplayed due to its methodological inconsistencies. However, the project leadership still used the identified benefits opportunistically as a counterweight to the negative CBA results. They also engaged local-level civil servants and politicians in making the reports. This built political momentum and made the local-level civil servants and politicians adopt the mindset of the project. This study shows how a methodologically flawed analysis is used for political manoeuvring. From a scientific CBA perspective, this is alarming, but from a political perspective it is not surprising. The findings echo earlier research showing that analysis for decision making is often used for political purposes. The results suggest that future research should consider how opportunism in alternative benefit analysis can be limited.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a novel approach to economic evaluation of infrastructure, the benefit analyses in the Swedish high-speed rail project, and to analyse what role these can play in the decision-making process. The reports identify benefits from infrastructure investment at the local level and were intended to assist in making co-financing agreements and as a basis for decisions on route-planning and prioritisation of public transport investments. The study finds that the benefit analyses are insufficient as decision bases as they double-count benefits, disregard costs, are methodologically inconsistent and lack comparability. Rather, they seem to fulfil the role of negotiation bids in a process that focuses on measuring the level of commitment and the willingness to contribute financially to the project. It seems that the new method increases the space for political manoeuvring which together with the one-sided focus on benefits risks worsening the optimism bias observed in mega-project planning.

Highlights:

This paper analyses the benefit analyses in the Swedish high-speed rail project.
It finds that the benefit analyses are insufficient as decision bases.
The method increases the space for political manoeuvring.
Methodological stringency is needed to improve the benefit analysis

We investigate the opportunities and challenges of the forth wave of digitalization, also referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), with respect to public transport and how it can support sustainable development of society. Environmental, economical, and social perspectives are considered through analysis of the existing literature and explorative studies. We conclude that there are great opportunities for both transport operators and planners, as well as for the travelers. We describe and analyze a number of concrete opportunities for each of these actors. However, in order to realize these opportunities, there are also a number of challenges that needs to be addressed. There are both technical challenges, such as data collection issues, interoperability, scalability and information security, and non-technical challenges such as business models, usability, privacy issues, and deployment.

An agent-based simulation model for supporting the decision making in urban transport planning is presented. The model can be used to investigate how different transport infrastructure investments and policy instruments will affect the travel choices of passengers. We identified four main categories of factors influencing the choice of travel: cost, time, convenience, and social norm. However, travelers value these factors differently depending on their individual characteristics, such as age, income, work flexibility and environmental engagement, as well as on external factors, such as the weather. Moreover, instead of modeling the transport system explicitly, online web services are used to generate travel options. The model can support transport planners by providing estimations of modal share, as well as economical and environmental consequences. As a first step towards validation of the model, we have conducted a simple case study of three scenarios where we analyze the effects of changes to the public transport fares on commuters’ travel choices in the Malmö-Lund region in Sweden.

The paper analyses how soft space planning as spatial strategy making at regional level is influencing local-level planning. The analysis covers 10 municipalities in the Swedish Region of Skåne. The results illustrate that the dialogue-based process has established a broad consensus on the need to consider the regional scale in municipal planning. However, the results also show that the impact on planning is limited since the consensus-based process resulted in strategic objectives with limited influence on prevailing planning practices. Findings also illustrate that key concepts for operationalising the strategies – including densification and public transport accessibility – were defined and used differently in different municipalities. Consequently, a more stringent use, and stricter definitions, of core concepts could be a way to strengthen the capacity of soft space regional planning.