Public Transport Governance

Abstract

Public transport can deliver multiple public values, including sustainability, accessibility, and safety. This is a challenging task because actors hold different views in relation to the way in which public transport should work and the outcomes it should produce. The role of governance is to link and coordinate these fragmented views in collective decision-making processes; governance identifies goals and establishes the allocation, amongst diverse actors, of the roles and responsibilities – along with the needed resources and discretionary ability (agency) – for the design and implementation of public transport policies and services. To effectively conduct this task, decision-makers need to embrace, rather than rebuff, the complex interdependencies and conflicts between public values and adopt a whole-of-values, adaptive, and context-aware approach to governance design. Scholars can support in this task, tackling the study of public transport governance through a more comprehensive lens, moving beyond studies with a partial focus on changes in formal institutions only.