Strengthening the institutions in charge of mobility

Wide-spread institutional fragmentation undermines the ability to enhance transportation services. Separating urban sector functions into different organizations – each with its own boards, staff, budgets, and by-laws – often translates into missed opportunities, such as the failure to site new housing projects near public transport junctions.

Well-functioning institutions and a high level of political support are essential for creating and maintaining good quality infrastructure and services for urban mobility. Urban mobility is also impacted by parties from outside the transport sector associated with land use, and social and environmental impacts. In developing countries in particular, powerful non-specialist stakeholders can exert influences that seriously undermine efforts at achieving integrated development between urban movement and land use.

This calls for strong strategic planning and coordination from national and local governments who need to provide enabling legal frameworks and policies, and address mobility in light of their global city planning endeavours. Authorities also need to allocate sufficient time and funds to improve their transport infrastructure over the long-term and to accommodate future travel demands.

To oversee these efforts, countries, regions, and cities need to set-up well-managed transport authorities that set clear and measurable objectives and can efficiently coordinate urban transportation services. In large metropolitan areas that are split into separate administrative zones, efforts need to be coordinated by a single authority to ensure efficiency through common planning and addressing the area as one, effectively cutting costs on infrastructure development.