The World Bank commissioned LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Political Science to help inform and improve its lending operations and technical assistance programmes by developing a systematic understanding of urban transport governance in specific pilot cities (Bogotá, Buenos Aires and London). The results and analysis of the mapping exercise of urban transport infrastructure, services and operations, as well as a methodological approach designed on three different entry points, will enable the Bank to engage more effectively with the key context-specific transport decision-makers. It also set the basis for the Bank to eventually scale-up the analysis and potentially compare urban transport governance across regions.
The governance of urban transport is not well-understood and there are limited examples of systematic analytical approaches to generate this understanding. This project acknowledges how negative transport policy outputs may be linked to poor urban transport governance, including rising motorisation rates, increased congestion, haphazard city planning, social exclusion, worsening air quality and rising greenhouse gas emissions. In response to this knowledge and information gap (as well as to transport challenges), Mapping Urban Transport Governance brought together several project activities and methods.
The project included
- extensive literature review
- convening of an expert workshop
- development of a methodological framework
- establishment of a transport taxonomy and a data collection protocol utilising a multi-method approach
- design and implementation of a standardised survey.
These efforts together have established a comprehensive approach to data collection, analysis and communication of critical characteristics of urban transport governance in individual cities.
Image | Buenos Aires, © Maurício Guardiano on Unsplash