Public Transportation And Urban Decentralization

An examination of the relationship between mass transit and decentralization of population and employment in urban areas of the United States with case studies of Boston, Rochester, San Jose and Tampa. Policy recommendations are included.

Financing public transport through public funds is a common practice that can be justified on different grounds: equity, natural monopoly and, particularly with the increasing motorization rate, externalities produced by private transport (congestion, pollution, road accidents) especially in urban areas. In addition, there is a belief that transport investments support economic growth, in particular transit investments because they help fostering the agglomeration effect. Whether local or national tax sources should be used for subsidizing public transport is a fairly recent question, at least in Europe where, historically, countries used to be very centralized. Several national policy reviews as well as academic papers suggest that the reforms aiming at decentralizing power and responsibility for urban public transport management lead to successful outcomes. Yet, there is no literature on the effects of decentralization of tax raising on public transport provision although an increasing number of subnational governments reports a mismatch between transferred resources and devolved responsibilities and the public finance literature indicates that decentralization of finance authority can improve the results of decentralization reforms.

Cities and towns are vital for the development of economic systems and social organisations. However, cities face tremendous challenges. They have to simultaneously attract business, provide a good livelihood for their inhabitants, generate enough resources to finance infrastructure and social needs, and take care of their poor. The Challenge of Urban Government: Policies and Practices looks at the consequences of globalisation on city management. This book focuses on the complex of issues generated in urban areas, such as the dynamics of metropolitan spaces, and the need to define strategic territory for operational and policy purposes. Some urgent challenges include how to handle spillovers across municipalities and the need to create a new city structure over an existing city to give the suburbs some elements of centrality. It examines the dynamics of governance and how to get stakeholders' participation in the government process.

This work examines the politics of how public transportation in the Chicago metropolitan area has been organized and financed from the mid-1890s up through the mid-1990s a century later. The greatest focus is on the years since 1970. Starting in 1970, Chicago's urban transit system became the last major transit property in the US to cease meeting its operating costs from the farebox. A series of emergency bailouts ensued, while the state sought a regional organization and tax base for transit carriers in the city and the suburbs. These efforts resulted in the enactment of the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) in 1973, and its narrow approval in a referendum in 1974 which pitted the city against the suburbs. Although the RTA did stabilize, improve, and expand transit during the 1970s, city-suburban conflict plagued the agency. The RTA's failure to control costs led it to the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1980s. In 1983 the state passed a package of reforms which included some cost control measures, and an institutional component. The RTA now became an administrative agency with oversight responsibilities for the urban system, and two new service boards: one for commuter trains and the other for suburban buses. The major findings of this research are based on the Chicago experience, but have relevance for metropolitan areas throughout the US and in other industrial democracies. Through most of the history of the transit industry, there has been a tendency towards consolidation. But in Chicago (and in several other cities) there has more recently been a move in the other direction towards smaller, more accountable units. This move is linked to a shift in power from the city towards the suburbs. As the suburbs find a voice in transit matters (despite their varied needs), they seek greater local control and accountability of transit institutions. Even if the Chicago reforms have not brought about regional harmony on transit issues, they have made it possible for the city and suburbs to work together more smoothly than before.