Coordinating public transport with land use and road infrastructure

1. Coordinatingpublic transport with land use and roadinfrastructure Investigatingmechanismsinvolved in two Scandinavian urban projects Research Director Frode Longva Instituteof transport Economics flo@toi.no

2. The objective Background • The transportation sector is a major contributor to climate change • Current measures are not sufficient to stop the negative effects The challenge: • Need to transcend PT policies into a wider sustainable agenda • Combing PT policies with issues of land use and road infrastructure • Ultimately increases the complexity involved in policy making and coordination This paper: • Examines the way PT measures are considered and implemented together with land use and road infrastructure policies • In two Scandinavian urban areas: Trondheim and Helsingborg

3. The cases Trondheim: • PT initiatives in the context of a policy package: The Environmental Transport package • The municipality, the region/PTA and the Road administration Helsingborg: • PT initiatives in the context of a partnership agreement: The Busvision • The municipality, the region/PTA, the operator Similarities • Seen as “upfront” in their PT solutions due to high actions taken towards reducing congestion and carbon dioxides • Combines PT measures with infrastructure and/or land use measures to achieve them

4. What is policy coordination? • Pressman&Wildavsky (1984): No suggestion for reform is more common than ”what we need is more coordination” • No generally agreed-upon definition of coordination exists • As a starting point: • “instruments and mechanisms that aim to enhance the voluntary or forced alignment of tasks and efforts of organizations within the public sector” (Bouckaert et al 2010:16) • The literature further separates between: • Horizontal and vertical coordination • Policy formulation and policy implementation

5. Organisationalcoordination • Completecontracting • Incompletecontracting • Discursivecoordination Coordinatingmechanisms– movingbeyondthe formal instruments Authority - control - sanctions - incentives - trust - consensus Deployment; how?Actors; who?Strength; what?

6. Organisational coordination • Same, same: Both cases combine • Working groups, administrative and political steering committees • All parties involved • But different: The organisations serve different purposes • Trondheim: the committees have hierarchically superior positions • Helsingborg: no pre-defined superior positions • The strain of coordination is put on • the consensus/equality based working groups in Helsingborg • the authority based steering committee in Trondheim • And same again: • Land use included in policy formulation, excluded from organizational instruments in both cases

7. Complete contracting • Authority mechanisms are replaced by control, sanctions and procedures of non-compliance • Two cases: • The service contract from PTA to operator in Trondheim • The service contract from PTA to operator in Helsingborg • Equal contractual arrangements despite functioning in different organizational surroundings • Both are highly detailed, incentivized, one-sided contracts • In line with aim of no operator involvement in Trondheim • At stake with aims of mutual partnership in Helsingborg • Complete contracting is less flexible and harder to adjust during the lifetime of the contract

8. Incomplete contracting • Control/sanctions are replaced by negotiation and trust • Two cases: • The Norwegian reward fund • The agreement between Helsingborg and the PTA • The Norwegian reward fund from state to the region/municipality • Specifies goals, financial obligations, monitoring forms etc • However, the evaluation form is open for interpretations • A vertical instrument spurring horizontal policy coordination • The agreements in Helsingborg are more vague • Evaluation through ongoing consultations and no sanctions • Control through the ongoing cooperation in the working groups • Contrast to the contractual clauses between the PTA and the operator

9. Discursivecoordination • Coordination through consensus building • For the PT planner, coordination leads to a variety of new partners • A variety of competencies and meeting of different knowledge claims. • In Helsingborg, the inclusion of the operator revealed knowledge and power struggles with those of the PTA • Initially, all involved parties were conceived equal • The operator was not allowed to lead any working groups + unlevelled resources • In Trondheim, the inclusion of the Road Administration revealed different cultures from those of the city planners and PTA • Planning of road investments without sufficient PT improvements

10. Conclusion • The findings calls for a system wide perspective: One mechanism may counteract another • The chosen coordinating instruments may be at stake with policy formulation • Land use was excluded in both cases • Complete contracting hardly consistent with mutual partnerships • Power structures may undermine policy coordination • Unlevelled amount of resources and competencies • Clashes of knowledge • Hierarchical and network mechanisms may be mutually reinforcing • Cooperation in working groups may require at strong authority based mechanism. • A vertical mechanism may spur horizontal coordination, eg. Reward fund • The findings stresses the importance of trust and cultural factors when designing the coordination process

11. So what? • Goal achievement in both cases • Sharp increase in PT patronage • Do we need all these coordinating efforts? • However: • In both cases: Thanks to isolated PT measures • In both cases: Infrastructure + land use endangers goal achievement • What happens in the long run? • More research is needed: • On the effects and limits of coordination • On the coordination problems and tensions which can exist between representatives of different planning sectors