After decades of vacillating between the extremes of government and private ownership, culminating in a steady decline in services and patronage during the 1960s, urban public transport in france underwent a series of institutional reforms in the early 1970s, leading to remarkable improvements in the quality and quantity of services offered, as well as in usage. The system which has evolved over the past 15 years is a private/public hybrid: most operators are private, selected through competitive bidding every five years; all other aspects - the ownership of equipment and facilities, the establishment of routes, tariffs, and service specifications, the power to impose on local enterprises a dedicated transport tax, and to make investment decisions - belong to intercommunal, areawide public transport authorities, made up of elected officials from constituent communes. Five elements of the french approach are especially relevant to urban public transport in developing countries: (i) system coherence, whereby all aspects of the system are related to each other and covered in an explicit policy; (ii) the contracting approach, fostering a quid pro quo relationship among all private and public actors involved; (iii) the preservation of competition, to maintain efficiency in providing services; (iv) decentralisation, which helps balance out local demands and resources; and (v) the stability of the non-tariff revenues, which permit orderly development over time.
Abstract