Urban Transportation: Who Governs?

Abstract

Governments and the urban transportation business agree that local transportation policies should be more comprehensive, linking projects involving public transportation, parking and traffic, city planning, and the like. In France, however, these different responsibilities are dispersed among several local institutions because of the difficulties of cooperation between cities. There is no transit authority capable of managing all these questions technically and politically. This task of bringing coherence to actions in different fields could be contracted out to the private sector. There is, however, a risk that this system would reduce local elected representatives' legitimate power of decision, and other, more informal methods of coordination should be promoted.