Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Transport Policy
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/tranpol

How to create efficient public transport systems? A systematic review of

critical problems and approaches for addressing the problems
Robert Hrelja a, b, *, 1, Jamil Khan a, c, 1, Fredrik Pettersson a, c, 1
a
K2 (The Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport), SE-223 81, Lund, Sweden
b
Malm€o University, SE-205 06 Malm€o, Sweden
c
Lund University, 221 00, Lund, Sweden

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Creating efficient public transport systems that attract users is a challenging task in contexts where the control of
Public transport public transport is divided between various actors. Recent research on public transport has therefore seen
Governance increasing focus on issues like coordination, collaboration and steering in complex governance settings. How­
Policy
ever, more is known about what needs to be done than how to implement the necessary changes. This paper
Collaboration
Planning
presents a systematic literature review with a focus on developing the understanding on how to improve the
Decision making conditions for public transport. The reviewed articles are analysed for increasing the understanding of the critical
challenges in the planning and implementation of measures to increase public transport travel; the working
practices for dealing with problems described in the literature; and the advantages and disadvantages of different
working practices. Based on the analysis an analytical framework is developed that can be used to study and
evaluate working practices for managing critical challenges. The framework consists of three interconnected
factors (i) actors, (ii) institutions (laws and rules that govern the interaction of the actors), and (iii) work pro­
cesses (phases in the interaction between the actors). Drawing on the results of the systematic review a number of
key issues for establishing working practices for dealing with the challenges are emphasized for each of the
factors.

1. Introduction Kenworthy, 2015).

An efficient public transport system offers travellers short waiting
times between departures, quick travel times, punctuality and clear in­
formation (e.g. Kenyon and Lyons, 2003). In urban environments linking
residential areas with urban centres and areas with many workplaces,
systems should be designed with few lines and frequent departures
characterised by a high degree of punctuality. Ticket systems should be
simple and integrated, and vehicles should be comfortable and of a high
standard, and should allow for comfortable boarding (Matas, 2004;
Abrate et al., 2009; Redman et al., 2013). The planning and imple­
mentation of efficient public transport requires a systems perspective,
and local and regional transport and land use planning should be inte­
grated so that planning at all levels strengthens the attractiveness of
public transport and its long-term competitiveness vis-a�-vis car traffic.
This includes giving public transport priority compared to other trans­
port modes on specific corridors (Nielsen et al., 2005; Newman and
Many cities and countries have now formulated policy goals
regarding a shift from road traffic to trains, trams, and busses (Newman
and Kenworthy, 2015). However, to implement the type of measures
described above, and thereby create efficient public transport systems
has proven difficult (Santos et al., 2010; Holmberg, 2013; Dickinson and
Wretstrand, 2015). Previous research has identified some of the main
challenges in this area, and often makes the point that the control of
public transport is divided between various actors (O’Sullivan and Patel,
2004; Meyer et al., 2005). However, a structural review of critical
problems is lacking, as is an analysis of how to manage the problems that
prevent the creation of an efficient public transport system. The existing
knowledge indicates that significant effort and policy packages are
needed to increase the proportion of public transport travel (Santos
et al., 2010). In summary, an in-depth analysis of ongoing efforts to
increase the proportion of public transport travel is required. In this
paper we refer to efforts to increase public transport as working

* Corresponding author. K2 (The Swedish Knowledge Centre for Public Transport), SE-223 81, Lund, Sweden.
E-mail address: robert.hrelja@mau.se (R. Hrelja).
1
These authors contributed equally to this work.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.10.012
Received 26 June 2019; Accepted 25 October 2019
Available online 26 October 2019
0967-070X/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Robert Hrelja, Transport Policy, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2019.10.012
R. Hrelja et al. Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx

practices. The concept of working practices is used broadly to include
different types of processes and the arenas in which these take place, in
order to improve public transport patronage. The analysis also includes
an assessment of the efficiency of existing working practices that can
serve as the basis for the transfer of knowledge and experience.
This article helps to fill this knowledge gap through a systematic
review of existing research literature on how to improve the conditions
for public transport. The primary questions of the analysis are:
● What are the main challenges and critical problems in the planning
of efficient public transport systems and the implementation of
measures to increase such travel?
● Which working practices for dealing with the problems are described
in the literature? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the
different working practices?
We will use the findings of this earlier research to develop an
analytical framework that can be used to study and evaluate working
practices for managing critical challenges. This framework identifies
and describes the principles and choices that face public transport actors
in trying to create efficient public transport, including how to organise
collaboration between actors. Moreover, it represents a contribution to
the research on public transport policy, planning and governance, and as
such it endeavours to advance the theoretical understanding of this
research theme. By doing this we can hopefully contribute to transport
policy research in general. As Marsden and Reardon (2017) points out,
transport policy research strangely lacks analysis about the actual re­
alities on the ground, such as context, power, resources and legitimacy –
that is, factors that are important for how problems in the planning of
efficient public transport systems are handled.
The framework is developed through an in-depth analysis of research
literature about how to improve the conditions for public transport. The
literature is selected for its focus on how various actors work to improve
the conditions for public transport. In this context, “actors” include
private and public actors which exercise different forms of influence
over the resources (e.g., power, knowledge, money, mandates) required
to bring about improved conditions for public transport. Our investi­
gation of working practices is based on an analytical interest in the
interaction between actors, and in how planning and decision-making
practices affect the way in which the actors attempt to address critical
problems. To overcome problems that stand in the way of the creation of
an efficient public transport system, actors must develop new ways of
dealing with problems. Our interest in capturing this aspect is expressed
in our use of the term “working practices.”
Scopus and TRID. Scopus covers all research areas and TRID is the
world’s largest resource for transportation literature. To keep the
number of publications to a manageable basis, we chose to limit our
searches to peer-reviewed articles, literature reviews, and conference
papers published between 2006 and 2017. This meant that we excluded
monographs and PhD theses. Although this obviously affects the
outcome of the search we believe it to be motivated both from practical
reasons and since peer-review articles constitute the main way in this
field to publish research results. The searches were further confined to
publications with the word public transport in the title, or as keywords
in combination with several other search words. The following search
words were used: public transport, public transit, passenger transport, urban
transport. A combination of the search words urban, transport, and pas­
senger were used to create a search set. This search set was then used to
search in different combinations with the following English words:
governance, interplay, co-operation, collaboration, organisation, planning
practice, stakeholder, institution, authorities, municipalities, policy, planning,
strategy, reforming. Various forms of the words were covered by so called
truncation, for example authorit*.
Because of the large amount of references in Scopus and the difficulty
of performing exact searches with generic search words (such as “policy”
and “planning”), we restricted the search results to social sciences
publications. The possibility to limit the search result to only social
science was used in that database. TRID has no social science filter but
since it is a database referring only to transport related publications and
with a controlled thesaurus, it offers good possibilities to search with
high precision without limiting to a specific subject area.
2.2. Search hits and the selection of studies
The search resulted in 135 hits. The 135 publications in the list of
search results were compiled as abstracts in a document which we then
reviewed. Following a thorough perusal of the abstracts, 44 publications
that were judged to be interesting were selected. See Fig. 1 for an
overview of the selection process. The publications that were omitted at
this stage were either not related to transport or did not deal with the
questions of sustainable and/or public transport governance. For rea­
sons of space, we also opted to remove publications that dealt with
procurement and/or contract forms. Although this is a relevant topic it is

2. Method

The review has been carried out with the help of the PRISMA
checklist, a tool for conducting systematic reviews of research literature
(Liberati et al., 2009). A systematic review is intended to answer a
previously defined research question by collecting and summarising all
empirical results that meet certain predefined selection criteria. The
implementation of a systematic review involves several steps, including
the identification of all publications that are likely to be of interest, the
definition of the selection criteria for the selection of publications, the
assessment of the quality of each publication, the extraction of data, the
qualitative synthesis of the data, and where possible and appropriate, a
quantitative synthesis (Liberati et al., 2009). The PRISMA checklist is
comprehensive and is adapted in certain respects in order to record data
that is important to determine the quality of quantitative studies.
Because the factors we aim to address in this review are of a clearly
qualitative nature, we have chosen to exclude the quantitative synthesis.

2.1. Information sources and searches

Fig. 1. Process for the identification and selection of articles. Based on the
The literature searches in bibliographic databases were carried out in PRISMA flow chart (Liberati et al., 2009).

2
R. Hrelja et al.
a very specific aspect of public transport governance and would require
its own literature review. Following a review of the remaining 44 arti­
cles, an additional 17 publications were cut from the list because they
were not judged to be of interest – because their research design was not
of adequate quality, they failed to present any real findings, or the
substance of the study described was not relevant to our own. In the end,
27 publications were included in the qualitative synthesis and are pre­
sented in this article (see the literature list for reference information on
the 27 articles divided into three categories described below).
2.3. Identification of categories
Many articles describe how the range and number of actors involved
in governing public transport is increasing. This situation can be un­
derstood by the term governance. By this term we want to describe a
situation where the governing practices of public transport are driven
and performed through complex interactions between public organisa­
tions from various levels of government, companies, unions, interest
group etc. At the most general level, theories of governance concern how
societies create and uphold rules and order in social processes (Bevir,
2013), or how the ‘pursuit of collective interests’ (Peters and Pierre,
2016, p. 3) is organized at different scales and levels of social interac­
tion. Understood in this way the term governance signals the interest the
reviewed articles show for how the relations between actors influence
the way problems standing in the way of efficient public transport are
dealt with. The 27 publications that were included in the qualitative
synthesis were divided into three categories of relevance for the gov­
erning of public transport:
1 Governance challenges for a sustainable transport system (10 titles):
Articles with a general focus on sustainable transport systems (in
which public transport is studied as part of a larger context) ended up
in this category. The articles tend to focus more on critical problems
than on working practices, although the latter topic is also addressed.
Almost all the articles constitute case studies of one or more cities.
Two articles are about the difficulties involved in achieving transport
integration,2 and three articles describe specific tools or working
practices.
2 The governance of public transport systems (8 titles): The articles in this
category are about the difficulties of creating well-functioning public
transport systems and everything that involves in terms of the
planning of routes, the coordination of departure schedules, the
creation of coherent ticket systems, etc. in order to provide good
service, coherence, and simplicity to passengers. These articles focus
on both critical issues and working practices. Six articles are case
studies of one or several cities which have experienced problems
creating well-functioning public transport systems as a result of
regulatory frameworks and the organisation of public transport.
3 Integrated transport and land use planning (9 titles): This category
consists of articles that focus on working practices aimed at
achieving a transport and land use planning that will increase travel
by public transport in the long term. Many of the publications
investigate solutions (both organisational and process-oriented) in
order to make it easier for actors with different interests and objec­
tives to make decisions that lead to the development of land use
which contribute to more sustainable travel behaviour. None of the
2
Transport integration is a term that is used to highlight the importance of
enabling combined trips with different transport modes. The term also has a
broader meaning which relates to the fact that measures in the transport sector
have implications for other policy areas, and should therefore be highlighted
from different perspectives, including the social, environmental and economic
effects of measures employed in the transport system, and how these effects
contribute to (or counteract) objectives in other policy areas (see, for example,
Preston, 2010).
3
Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx
articles focus on the outcome of the initiatives with respect to
changes in travel patterns. Rather, all of them study the processes
themselves, often through case studies from several countries.
Some overlap between the categories exists, but it is our opinion that
our categorisation is justified, because it contributes to analytical clarity
and enables a comparison between different studies based on their pri­
mary empirical focus. The 27 publications in the systematic review were
initially analysed individually in a coding scheme. First, we wrote short
summaries of the articles including topic, scope and main conclusions.
Then the findings of each article was analysed based on two thematic
questions:
� What are the challenges and critical problems described in the
article?
� Which working practices are described in the article? What are their
advantages and disadvantages?
After the analysis of all publications a synthesis was made of the
results according to the three categories described above.
3. Findings
This section summarises the findings of the articles within the three
different categories described above.
3.1. Governance challenges for a sustainable transport system
3.1.1. What are the challenges and critical problems described in the
articles?
Many of the articles address the problems posed by a complex
governance setting involving numerous public and private actors who
must collaborate on matters of transport planning (To €nnesen, 2015;
Naess et al., 2011; Evers and de Vries, 2013). Evers and de Vries (2013)
present a comparative case study of five megacities or regions (including
London, Rhine-Ruhr and San Francisco) that examines how the gover­
nance of “collective action” problems is organised, and might be
improved. The starting point of their article is the thesis that governance
has become more complex and elusive as a result of an evolution from
“government” to “governance”. They find that the hierarchical re­
lationships between the central government and regional/urban actors
have become less important. However, hierarchy still plays a crucial
role, and support from the central level is important for the imple­
mentation of measures, especially when many actors are involved. Two
articles (Schmale et al., 2015; Hickman et al., 2013) address the problem
of how fragmentation in the public transport sector can lead to the
increased prioritisation of automobile traffic over public transport,
while in an institutional analysis of transport planning in Melbourne
from 1956 to 2006, Low and Astle (2009) find that the actors who
support increased car traffic and road construction have had better ac­
cess to decision-makers and funding than public transport actors. One
important reason for this was that these actors have been more unified,
whereas there is considerable fragmentation in the public transport
sector.
Other challenges touched upon in some articles are the effects of the
privatisation and deregulation of the transport sector and the tension
between the demands of economic profit and growth and the environ­
mental objectives of the transport sector. In a comparison between Oslo
and Copenhagen, Naess et al. (2011) find that economic considerations
take priority over the environment, both in times of economic growth
and in periods of economic crisis. They argue that this situation has been
created by deregulation and a neo-liberal policy that prioritises eco­
nomic considerations in decision-making and planning. A similar
conclusion is drawn by Sco €ller-Schwedes (2010), who find that the
major counterforces to increased transportation integration in Germany
are deregulation and privatisation. Although there are (and have always
R. Hrelja et al.
been) political support for increased transport integration, it has not
proven possible to put these ideas into practice.
Two articles highlight the term “path dependency” as an explanation
for the development of the transport system. Low and Astle (2009)
develop the concept of institutional path dependency in a transport
context and argue that it consists of three elements: physical (dominant
forms of transport in the city), organizational (how transport planning
and provision is organized) and discursive (the dominant views on
problems and solution in the transport system). They show how the
continuous prioritisation of road construction over investments in public
transport have caused Melbourne to become confined to a
car-dependent transport system from which it is difficult to escape.
Moreover, they posit that “institutional” lock-in means that car traffic
remains a priority even though this goes against the current goals of
transport planning. Fenton (2016) studies transport planning in Basel,
and finds that “path dependency” can both prevent and allow the
development of sustainable mobility. His conception of path de­
pendency is less comprehensive and relates primarily to how different
transport modes develop. With the right policy decisions, it is possible to
lock travellers into more sustainable patterns of transport such as
cycling, walking and public transport. However, according to Fenton
(2016), development occurs through incremental changes and radical
ideas and measures are often eliminated or watered down in the course
of the political process, making it difficult to break with dominant paths.
3.1.2. Which working practices are described in the literature? What are
their advantages and disadvantages?
The articles in this category focus mainly on challenges and prob­
lems, rather than on working practices. However, they do draw some
conclusions regarding functional working practices.
Evers and de Vries (2013), who studied how decision-makers in five
mega cities or regions worked to create effective regional governance as
an answer to the problem of fragmentation, argue that none of the cities
have managed to establish a regional political organisation or authority
that has more influence than the local or central governments of the
same region. Rather than establishing a new permanent regional orga­
nisation, a more successful strategy is to obtain models for “joint deci­
sion-making”. In the same article, the authors compare how the different
cities have gone about developing regional train infrastructures, and
find that their approaches were highly varied. The most successful ef­
forts were those of the Rhine-Ruhr area, where there was already a
strong regional authority that had overall responsibility and a mandate.
In London and San Francisco, it was harder to create effective gover­
nance, because their situations were characterised by the involvement of
many private actors and organisational fragmentation. In guiding
development in the direction of sustainability, decision-makers in these
cities encounter the tension between public and private actors.
To€nnesen (2015) describes two different models for planning that
have been used in two Norwegian cities. Each have distinct pros and
cons. In Trondheim, a relatively self-contained model involving a few
contributing actors was developed, and many measures have been
adopted and implemented. According to the author, this successful but
closed process may eventually lead to problems with the implementa­
tion of “difficult” measures. This is because a closed planning process
with few participating actors may result in difficulties with convincing
actors who did not participate to support the work of implementing the
proposed changes. In Buskerud, an open process was created instead. It
involved many actors, but failed to result in concrete decisions about the
many proposed measures. According to To €nnesen (2015), the network in
Buskerud may still be successful in the long run, because it is supported
by many different actors and this may facilitate the implementation of
the “difficult” measures.
Two articles highlight specific planning methods or tools that can be
used in transport planning. Schmale et al. (2015) propose multi-criteria
analysis as a planning method with the potential to meet the challenges
of organisational fragmentation, lack of political will, and lack of
4
Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx
funding. The method was tested in the city of Potsdam in Germany. In
concrete terms, it applied a working practice that involved three steps:
the “framing” of problems in a local context; the development of
solution-oriented knowledge, and the implementation of measures. A
working group managed to produce consensus-based decisions, and in
the space of a year, it succeeded in establishing an order of priority for
75 different proposed measures. The list of priority measures were
presented to the city’s decision-making assembly, and this led to an
adaptation of a budget that allowed for the financing of high-priority
measures. In the second article, Curtis and Scheurer (2010) test and
evaluate a planning tool for planning and communication related to the
interaction between land use and transport, with a focus on accessibility.
The tool was used in the city of Perth in Australia, and the authors
conclude that it is essential to clearly visualise the interaction between
land use and transport in a way that both planners and other stake­
holders can understand. Neither of the two studies demonstrate a clear
link between the planning methods and actual implementation of sus­
tainable transport measures in the cities, but they demonstrate new
ideas and methods on how planning can become more inclusive.
Two articles dealt with the difficulties of implementing ideas on
transport integration in the United Kingdom (Preston, 2010) and Ger­
many (Sco €ller-Schwedes, 2010). Both articles conclude that imple­
mentation is a problem, even when many participants support the idea
of increased transport integration. Sco €ller-Schwedes (2010) posit that
true transport integration will not become a reality as long as the
transport sector remains deregulated and dominated by the
market-driven thinking. Preston (2010) is more optimistic and believes
that transport integration has succeeded to some extent in certain areas
and cities, but that no generally positive trend exists in the United
Kingdom. Preston (2010) also argues that evaluations indicate that
transport integration is a good thing, both from a cost-benefit perspec­
tive and in terms of positive environmental and social impacts. The
article concludes with some 20 recommendations for short and
long-term measures which would enhance transport integration,
including the increased quality control of private operators and
strengthened regional strategic planning.
3.2. The governance of public transport systems
3.2.1. What are the challenges and critical problems described in the
articles?
Most articles in this category deal with collaborative challenges,
governance problems, or the need of coordination between actors as a
result of organisation, the design of the regulatory framework, and the
division of responsibilities. An important condition for public transport,
as several articles point out, is that public transport planning is managed
in institutional contexts where governance is spread across local and
regional scales. The articles describe how the creation of a coherent
system for travellers is an organisationally complex undertaking fraught
with difficulties, and that due to the division of responsibility between
actors, there is sometime little incentive for the actors to improve quality
and prices. Several articles describe collaborative challenges in indi­
vidual countries. Hedegaard Sørensen and Gudmundsson, 2010 discuss
the collaborative challenges between operators and public authorities
that have arisen in the United Kingdom as a result of deregulated public
transport. They describe how the difficulties of planning public trans­
port as a coherent system can lead to low profitability for operators and
poor quality for the travellers, and note that existing legislation impedes
the initiation of changes. In a case study of major changes to the public
transport system in Seoul, Kim and Dickey (2006) similarly explain that
the city formerly had a poorly functioning system with low profitability
and quality. The lack of a holistic view of the public transport system
meant that it served neither passengers nor operators well. Public
transport authorities and operators could not manage the system as a
system, nor could they initiate change in light of the prevailing insti­
tutional conditions. Other articles describe how conflicts between
R. Hrelja et al.
authorities and operators make it difficult for actors to agree on planning
decisions. See, for example, the research of Lindau et al. (2014) on the
planning and introduction of BRT systems. Conflicts must be dealt with
in a complex organisational context involving multiple actors, while
often also competing with other modes of transport and operators.
3.2.2. Which working practices are described in the literature? What are
their advantages and disadvantages?
Several articles propose or describe how improvements in public
transport have been made possible by changes in the regulatory envi­
ronment that have created better conditions for planning public trans­
port as a system (Chen and Wikstrom, 2009; Lin et al., 2017; Wan et al.,
2013). Lin et al. (2017) describe how a system in the Taiwanese
metropolis of Taichung City, which had hitherto been expensive and
cumbersome for passengers, was reformed by opening up the market
and introducing competition between operators. This created new
business opportunities and increased travel in the long run. This
conclusion seems to contradict conclusions made in other articles about
how deregulation, privatisation, and the introduction of competition in
public transport have resulted in greater fragmentation in public
transport operations on the ground. Our position is that there is no
reason to assume that either a publicly controlled or a deregulated
public transport system provides the best outcome. The challenge is to
create a public transport system that offers travelers short waiting times
between departures, quick travel times, punctuality and clear informa­
tion, regardless of the legal setting in which public transport operates.
Other articles describe attempts at improvements and increased
collaborations within the framework of existing regulations. Because it
is difficult to initiate changes in regulations (such as those recounted in
the example above), we will provide an account of some of the key
themes in the articles that describe working practices that can be
addressed within the framework of existing regulations. Kim and Dickey
(2006) describe how a comprehensive reform of the fees, payment sys­
tems and lines in the bus system in Seoul were implemented in broad
collaboration with public transport operators, trade unions, interest
groups and the public. The authority responsible for public transport
created a collaboration forum which was used to develop a new and
better-functioning system. Kim and Dickey (2006) describe this
approach in terms of “partnership” and “network management”. They
also describe how the parties involved succeeded in addressing conflicts
of interest through the use of conflict management practices that pre­
vented actors from trying to gain advantages at the expense of others.
Instead, they tried to work out “win-win” solutions.
Hedegaard Sørensen and Gudmundsson, 2010 also describe how
actors are endeavouring to develop public transport through “partner­
ship” or “network governance”; in this case, they recount how operators
and authorities in Manchester are trying to increase the amount of travel
in a deregulated bus sector in the United Kingdom. Due to the deregu­
lated public transport system, operators and authorities must collabo­
rate on both vertical and horizontal levels. In this instance, collaboration
is achieved through non-binding agreements, in the form of so-called
“voluntary quality bus partnerships” between operators on schedules
and standard on the stops and buses (see Hrelja et al., 2018 for a recent
overview of research about public transport partnerships).
Other articles use other terms to describe similar collaborative ef­
forts, e.g., through the creation of “informal institutions” (governance
not established in law) (Hrelja et al., 2017). Hrelja et al. (2017) study, e.
g., the planning of the regional public transport system in the southern
Swedish region of Scania. In the absence of strong formal controls or
coordination mechanisms between municipalities (with responsibility
for land use planning) and regional public transport authorities (with
responsibility for public transport planning), government authorities
endeavour to create “informal institutions”. This is exemplified by the
creation of common visions for regional and local economic develop­
ment and for the role of public transport in the realisation of these ob­
jectives. This in turn helps local and regional authorities to agree about
5
Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx
where to invest in the system and how to co-ordinate the planning of
new buildings with the public transport system.
In summary, the articles demonstrate how actors attempt to establish
collaboration through “partnership” or “network governance”, which
often are not formally regulated in contracts or legislation but which
rather are implemented on a voluntary basis when organisations realise
that it is necessary to collaborate in order to carry out improvements
that they could not carry out alone. McLeod at al. (2017) describe such
working practices as “deliberative governance”. McLeod at al. (2017, p.
233), argues that “deliberative, integrated governance is associated with
far more sustainable and effective transport and land use integration
outcomes”, but it is uncertain how successful such collaboration has
been. The articles indicate that the outcomes differ from case to case. It
shows how important the local and regional context is for how well such
working practices work. Another disadvantage of such working practises
is that because they do not result in binding agreements, they may lack
the power to co-ordinate the behaviour of organisations or to steer them
in the desired direction.
3.3. Integrated transport and land use planning
3.3.1. What are the challenges and critical problems described in the
articles?
In principle, all the articles are based on a description of integrated
transport and town planning as a collaboration challenge. The problem
stems from the fact that many different actors must co-ordinate their
decisions to produce an urban structure which will contribute to
increased public transport use in the long term – what is sometimes
referred to in the literature as “Transit Oriented Development (TOD)”
(Mu and de Jong, 2012, Hakkaart and Morrissey, 2014). Hrelja (2015)
and Mu and de Jong (2016) describe how decentralised
decision-making, division of labour and distribution of commitment, as
well as increased tensions between different public sectors, constitute
key challenges in several European countries. Maulat and Krauss (2014)
also believe that the dialogue between actors is complicated by the fact
that they act on the national, regional and local level, that different
actors have their own technical and professional cultures, and that they
have different interests. The relationships between public and private
actors are also discussed, and Mu and de Jong (2016) believe that the
increasing complexity and conflicting objectives are a result of the
increased interdependence between private and public actors and NGOs.
Guthrie and Fan (2016) argue that legislation makes it more difficult for
companies to build housing in close proximity to public transport. Khan
and Bajracharya (2007) claims, on the contrary, that market forces are a
problem.
Kaufman and Sager (2006) posit that collaboration problems are
particularly critical in urban areas characterised by fragmented organ­
isational conditions, which necessitate both horizontal and vertical
co-ordination. According to Khan and Bajracharya (2007), the difficulty
lies in steering additional urban development in the direction of existing
or new public transport nodes and stations. Moreover, major target
points such as shopping centres or concentrations of workplaces must be
located in positions that make it advantageous to use public transport,
and subsequent urban development must be multi-use. According to
Guthrie and Fan (2016), the division of business areas and residential
areas (single-use zoning) or restrictions on development in some areas
(e.g., with regard to density/building height) constitute other problems.
Parking issues are a critical problem. Overly generous parking standards
make TOD projects expensive, because they take up land that could have
been used for construction. Excessive spaces for parking cause areas to
become less pedestrian-friendly, which in turn means that residents and
visitors use cars more, thus generating a need for parking. Yet according
to Maulat and Krauss (2014), the biggest problems can be found in urban
outskirts and suburbs. These areas are characterised by low density, high
car usage, barrier effects caused by infrastructure, unequal access to
land, regulations that prevent densification, and residents and local
R. Hrelja et al.
governments that are opposed to densification.
3.3.2. Which working practices are described in the literature? What are
their advantages and disadvantages?
In the following paragraphs, we describe five concrete working
practices that aim to overcome the problems described above. Kaufman
and Sager (2006) describe experiences gained in the course of producing
inter-organisational, ad hoc commissions for the coordination of trans­
port and land use planning in four Swiss cities. The ad hoc commissions
were established for specific projects where it was necessary to ensure
coordination. These projects are described as successful. This is partly
explained by the fact that these temporary commissions made it possible
to circumvent the established power structures. This allowed action
orientation through the establishment of new constellations of actors
that were willing to compromise, rather than remaining locked into
positions based on “power rationality,” in which actors confronted each
other in established forums to increase their own influence at the
expense of others. Another success factor for the ad hoc commissions
was that they helped to bridge gaps that are created by different pro­
fessional cultures. This helped to advance understanding of other or­
ganisations’ motivations.
Maulat and Krauss (2014) study the use of a French working practice
known as “contrat d’axe” (CDA). CDA is described as a bottom-up policy
tool for the integration of land use and transport planning. The article
focuses on a railway project, but CDA has also been used in conjunction
with light rail and BRT. CDA entails discussions between actors involved
in urban planning, which lead to contractual agreements between the
actors in which improvements to public transport match densification
around stations and the improvement of multimodal accessibility to
stations. The contracts established between the actors contain precise
objectives for the development of public transport (e.g., routing, service
improvements, frequency, and intermodality) and the urban develop­
ment of the area around the station (e.g., multi-use properties, density,
and the proportion of social housing), as well as for the station itself (e.
g., the size of car parks, steps to promote intermodality and accessi­
bility). The type of measures necessary to achieve the goals, as well as a
timetable for their implementation, was also specified in the contract. As
the study’s authors explain, one important advantage of the contracts is
that they make it possible to escape the confines of the prevailing
planning system and thus overcome the horizontal and vertical gaps that
hinder integrated land use and transport planning.
Mu and de Jong (2016) describe a case study of integrated land use
and transport planning in a city in western China. In the case examined
in the study, one important explanation for the successful implementa­
tion of integrated planning was the creation of an umbrella organisation,
the Grand Construction Committee (GCC). The umbrella organisation’s
function is to ensure that all involved actors are aware of each other and
become aware of all the initiative’s different objectives and interests.
The GCC works as a platform for dialogue and discussions between the
different actors.
In a comparative case study of integrated transport and town plan­
ning in the Australian cities of Queensland and Perth, Khan and Bajra­
charya (2007) describe two different approaches in each of these two
urban areas. The case study of Queensland describes how a change in the
planning system allowed for a legally binding regional plan. Among
other things, this change involved an attempt to limit ad hoc develop­
ment in urban outskirts by defining the idea of “urban footprints”, a form
of geographical delimitation for cities and towns, and the target for
residential development in various areas. A public organisation known
as the Transit Oriented Development Taskforce also developed manuals
and guidelines for integrated planning, which were highlighted as
important planning tools. However, according to Khan and Bajracharya
(2007), this approach resulted in small, often partially completed pro­
jects. Land ownership in the planned areas of development proved
difficult to manage through this process. In Perth, a new public orga­
nisation was established according to a public-private collaboration
6
Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx
model, with overall responsibility for the planning of new areas. A
number of Area Redevelopment Authorities were set up. These had the
right to initiate compulsory purchases of land, as well as the power to
take over planning responsibility for specific areas from local councils
for a limited period. In terms of the outcome of the specific projects, the
success of this working practice was not always clear-cut. In several
cases, demands for large parking areas for park-and-ride services caused
areas around the stations to more closely resemble parking lots than
residential/business areas.
Lastly, Curtis and James (2004) describe a model for integrated
planning through a so-called charrette process, implemented in the
Australian city of Perth. This is described as “a consensus-building,
non-adversarial approach to resolving complex planning projects” and
“it provides an alternative to the traditional sequential planning process
by being an interactive forum where concepts are drawn, discussed and
iterated in a live environment” (Curtis & James, p. 294). In this process,
synergies for different organisations and areas requiring compromise
were identified. The outcome was described as a new stretch of railway,
as well as dense and multi-use properties around the new stations.
4. Discussion
In this section, we discuss the findings from the systematic review
and answer the two primary questions. The discussion of the results is
followed by an analytical framework for studying and evaluating
various working practices with regard to their characteristics.
The first primary question is: What are the main challenges and critical
problems involved in the implementation of efficient public transport systems
and the instruments and measures used to increase travel? The review of the
three categories illustrates that many countries face similar challenges.
This is an interesting result in itself given the various national contexts of
the reviewed papers with substantial differences in political and
administrative systems. Overall, there is a broad consensus that the
current legislation and planning systems result in difficulties in imple­
menting measures to increase public transport use. In almost all the
publications, these challenges are described as co-operation, co-ordi­
nation or collaborative issues between actors with different objectives.
We choose to continue to talk about collaboration because this concept
(as opposed to co-ordination) brings to mind a higher degree of
complexity and extensive interaction between numerous formally in­
dependent actors. Collaboration between the public transport actors has
previously been defined as attempts to overcome problems through
collective management and efforts to change a situation, wherein
interdependent actors independently contribute to a situation in which
they act together to achieve common objectives (Hrelja et al., 2016). It is
a definition that corresponds to how several publications describe the
purpose of the working practices that have been initiated to address
critical issues (see below).
According to the literature, collaborative problems are particularly
evident in two areas. One concerns the difficulties of creating efficient
public transport systems and everything that involves in terms of the co-
operation of schedules, the creation of coherent ticket systems, etc. in
order to provide good service, coherence, and simplicity to passengers.
The second deals with the difficulties of establishing integrated public
transport and land use planning (which itself is a prerequisite for effi­
cient public transport systems).
However, the literature often describes the interaction between the
actors as anything but collaboratively oriented. Several publications
describe lock-ins and path dependency resulting from legislation, the
organisation of public transport, and the resultant power relationships
(e.g., Kaufman and Sager, 2006; Kim and Dickey, 2006; Low and Astle,
2009; Fenton, 2016). For example, Kim and Dickey (2006) describe how
such institutional conditions have prevented the public transport sector
from achieving a holistic approach and limited the opportunities for
initiating changes. Kaufman and Sager (2006) argue that established
arenas for transport planning are marked by power games and locked
R. Hrelja et al.
positions that severely limit the ability to bring about change. In the
same vein, Low and Astle (2009) indicate that attempts to change
transport planning through altered political goals are constrained by
planning that is dominated by actors with a vested interest in main­
taining the status quo (i.e., car use is rewarded). Fenton (2016) describes
how lock-ins and path dependency can also be to the public’s advantage,
but notes that a long process of incremental decisions is necessary to
achieve such success.
The fact that different actors have different professional cultures is
also discussed in the articles and presented as a problem and a compli­
cation to collaboration (which to some extent can be said to contribute
to the difficulties of creating both integrated planning and an efficient
public transport system) (e.g. Curtis and James, 2004; Low and Astle,
2009; Curtis and Scheurer, 2010; Maulat and Krauss, 2014; Schmale
et al., 2015). This causes communication problems, and actors may also
find it difficult to achieve consensus regarding possible solutions
(Maulat and Krauss, 2014). This in turn contributes to implementation
difficulties (Kaufman and Sager, 2006; Preston, 2010; Lindau et al.,
2014). Several articles also discuss tensions between market forces and
public control, although they draw different conclusions regarding
whether the problem lies in the influence of private actors or in the at­
tempts by public authorities to curb market forces (Naess et al., 2011;
Sc€oller-Schwedes, 2010; Hedegaard Sørensen and Gudmundsson, 2010;
Khan and Bajracharya, 2007; Guthrie and Fan, 2016).
The second primary question is: Which working practices for dealing
with the problems are described in the literature? What are the advantages
and disadvantages of the different working practices? One often described
remedy is the establishment of new organisational solutions that may be
temporary, i.e., which will be carried out in project form, be it of a more
permanent nature (e.g., new organisations) or an intermediate one (Kim
and Dickey, 2006; Kaufman and Sager, 2006; Mu and de Jong, 2016;
Khan and Bajracharya, 2007). A central idea behind these new solutions
is that they should help to bypass blockages caused by the current
planning system and administrative structures, and improve collabora­
tion between actors.
Other ways to circumvent such blockages is through “networks” or
“partnerships”. Two examples of such partnerships, from Seoul and
Manchester, are described in the literature (Kim and Dickey, 2006;
Hedegaard Sørensen and Gudmundsson, 2010). In both cases, these
partnerships are based on the voluntary participation of actors. Ac­
cording to certain of the articles, voluntary forms of collaboration are
based on the creation of common goals in order to collaboratively
achieve, e.g, integrated public transport and land use planning (Hrelja
et al., 2017). In order to achieve greater integration between transport
and land use planning, many articles (e.g., Curtis and James, 2004;
Kaufman and Sager, 2006; Maulat and Krauss, 2014; Mu and de Jong,
2016) describe how various forms of interorganisational collaboration
forums have been established, which involve all the actors whose
participation is necessary (such as public transport authorities, local and
national authorities responsible for land use and transport planning,
public transport operators, and other private stakeholders such as
landowners and developers). These organisational solutions take
different forms, depending on the context that exists in each respective
country. Given these differences in national context, it may be difficult
to draw too far-reaching conclusions on common denominators for
working practices. Many of the solutions did however make it possible
for the actors to go beyond their familiar roles and positions, and
allowed them to bypass the statutory planning process that cause
problems, concerns and dissatisfactions that must be dealt with in some
way. However, the articles demonstrate that these solutions are far from
perfect. Problems with managing the tension between market forces and
the control of public actors (such as those linked to land ownership)
were discussed in several of the cases (e.g., Khan and Bajracharya, 2007;
Kaufman and Sager, 2006; Maulat and Krauss, 2014; Guthrie and Fan,
2016).
Moreover, it is unclear what evidence there is that the proposed
7
Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx
solutions actually result in increased public transport. This issue is
related to research design where the analysed literature depart from an
interest in the processes themselves, i.e., the interaction between actors,
rather than departing from observed increase in public transport
patronage. It is often implicitly assumed that these processes or ways of
working yield positive results. Some of the studies (e.g. Chen and Wik­
strom, 2009; Lin et al., 2017; Wan et al., 2013) are important exceptions;
here the point of departures are observed increases in patronage, which
are explained by far reaching changes in governance structures. Based
on the results of the systematic review, we argue that there is a need for
more studies departing from verifiable increases of patronage within
existing governance structures. We can see from the reviewed literature
that there are many different, interesting solutions to address problems
of collaboration from within existing governance structures, but there is
a lack of knowledge on the effectiveness of these for actually increasing
patronage.
Next we will use the insights from the literature to describe a
framework for how to study and evaluate working practices. Hopefully,
this analytical framework can also elicit critical thinking and action
among public transport industry actors, and provide novel perspectives
on how to establish working practices that support the development of
efficient public transport. The analytical framework will be developed
on the basis of the insights that can be learned from the literature about
the interaction between actors, because this is the primary focus of the
literature. However, more research is (as already mentioned) needed in
order to be able to express an opinion regarding how the proportion of
public transport travel, customer satisfaction, etc. are affected by the
reviewed working practices, which are presented as solutions to
problems.
4.1. Analytical frameworks for studying and evaluating different working
practices
The systematic review reveals a number of factors that appear to be
important to the design of successful approaches. To start with, the
working practices must function in contexts involving numerous public
and private actors. Within the limits laid out by the existing legislation,
these actors must develop working practices that allow them to collec­
tively work towards the creation of an efficient public transport system.
A number of interconnected decisions must therefore be made that move
things in the desired direction. Work practices can be designed in many
different ways depending on the national context and local conditions,
and an analytical framework for studying, comparing and evaluating
them is needed. Such an analytical framework consists of the three
interconnected factors (i) actors, (ii) institutions (laws and rules that
govern the interaction of the actors), and (iii) work processes (phases in
the interaction between the actors). The framework is based on the way
in which the literature reviewed describes problems and the working
practices employed to address these problems. There is also previous
research on these factors, not included in the systematic review, that
may be of analytical interest. A systematic approach studying and
evaluating working practices can, for example, be facilitated by turning
to the institutional literature that not specifically analyses transport. We
have also used literature from other empirical areas than transport when
developing the analytical framework.
4.1.1. The actors and their interests
In many situations, the actors are both public and private, and have
different interests and views regarding problems and solutions. In the
articles, increased or improved collaboration is often presented as the
solution to the problems of public transport. This begs the question:
Which qualities of the interaction between actors enable well-
functioning collaboration? Several articles describe how tried-and-true
work processes are founded on “consensus-based decisions” or “joint
decision-making” (Kim and Dickey, 2006; McLeod et al., 2017; Curtis
and James, 2004). This illustrates the fact that the actors’ intentions
R. Hrelja et al.
within the context of the working practices should be to make decisions
that result in mutual benefits. The opposite of this would be working
practices in which the intention of the actors is to gain an advantage at
the expense of others, i.e., competition.
Collaboration does not mean that the actors strive for the exact same
goals. Rather, the actors explore the benefits of working together, and in
some cases collaboration can be a way for an actor to avoid a situation
that would have been more negative if a collaborative approach had not
been implemented. In addition, the actors have different reasons for
collaborating, and in order to make the collaboration work, they will
have to make decisions within the framework of the collaboration that
are not necessarily in their direct interest. In connection with this, it is
important to point out that conflicts of interests are unavoidable and
should be viewed as important parts of working practices. Previous
research in the transport field has pointed to the significance of the
power relations that characterize planning and decision-making in local
transport development in understanding the potential for changes to­
wards for example sustainability (Flyvbjerg, 1998). The key is how to
handle conflicts in a constructive way.
4.1.2. Institutions
The conditions for successful collaboration, and handling of conflicts
in a constructive way, are influenced by the institutions that govern the
behaviour of the actors. A vast literature exists on institutional defini­
tions. In one of the most widely used definitions North (1990) makes a
distinction between institutions and organisations (actors in our vo­
cabulary). For North institutions represent the rules of the game, while
organisations are the players. Of special interest for this paper is how
North (1991; p. 98) points out that institutions ‘consist of both informal
constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of
conduct), and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights).’ The
capacity to create innovative working practices is therefore, as high­
lighted by Gonzalez and Healey (2005), not only rooted in formal but
informal institutions. Gonza �lez and Healey (2005, p. 2056) state that
innovation capacity ‘is not just defined by formal laws and organisa­
tional competences, but is embedded in the dynamics of governance
practices, with their complex interplay of formal and informal relations’.
The challenge is to establish common rules and structures that steer
the behaviour of actors in the direction of an interaction that results in
the development of a collaboration that yields mutual benefits. If one
combines the concept pairs of collaboration/competition (see the dis­
cussion under the previous heading) and formal/informal institutions, it
becomes possible to categorise different working practices that are more
or less focused on collaboration, as illustrated in Fig. 2 below. According
to the literature, properly functioning collaboration ought to have
relatively good conditions to develop, in an interaction in which actors
work to find mutual benefits and to make decisions that are as fair as
possible (i.e., the lower half of Fig. 2). When the actors behave in this
manner, they ought to be equipped to handle the conflicts of interest
that are an inescapable part of collaboration.
The literature illustrates that a number of ways in which to design
institutions must be weighed. How these trade-offs are negotiated will
affect the actors’ roles and their influence over decisions and the content
of the planning. Below we discuss the four types of trade-offs that appear
to be particularly central, according to the research literature:
1) Transparency vs. secrecy
2) Legitimacy vs decision-making ability
3) Temporary vs. permanent
4) Formal governance mechanisms vs. informal governance
mechanisms
Transparency vs. secrecy are linked to legitimacy vs. decision-
3
Inspired by Thomas, 1992 and Hrelja et al. (2018).
8
Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx
making ability. All in all, they relate to the choice between including
many actors (and thus gaining strong legitimacy, the trade-off being
decision-making difficulties) and the decision to include fewer actors
(thus simplifying decision-making, but at the expense of the legitimacy
of the decisions). The findings outlined by Kaufman and Sager (2006),
To€nnesen (2015), and Schmale et al. (2015) indicate that the legitimacy
of the decisions is crucial to the implementation of difficult-to-carry-out
or potentially controversial measures. This means that in these cases, an
open process whose results are clearly legitimate is preferable, although
it may mean that it will take longer to reach a decision.
A recurring element in several of the studies (e.g., Curtis and James,
2004; Kaufman and Sager, 2006; Maulat and Krauss, 2014; Schmale
et al., 2015; Hrelja, 2015) is the implementation of new organisational
forums in order to bypass blockages caused by prevailing planning
systems and administrative structures. The findings of Kaufman and
Sager (2006), Kim and Dickey (2006), Khan and Bajracharya (2007),
Evers and de Vries (2013), Maulat and Krauss (2014) and Schmale et al.
(2015) indicate that there were benefits to provisional, process-oriented
organisational solutions as opposed to permanent decision-making fo­
rums. The latter were often fraught with power struggles and a form of
interaction between actors that had more to do with promoting their
own interests than with interacting in a spirit that yields synergies for
several actors. The question of how well permanent decision-making
forums function is an empirical one, but the results reported in the
literature can probably be explained by the fact that permanent
decision-making forums tend to be dominated by actors that develop a
shared view of what is desirable and rational regarding the future
development of the public transport system that stand in the way of
needed change.
In terms of formal governance mechanisms vs. informal governance
mechanisms, the literature demonstrates how the design of the regula­
tions creates problems which actors often try to get around by creating
informal governance mechanisms, e.g., through common visions of the
role of public transport in regional development (see Hrelja et al., 2017).
The fact that the literature uses concepts such as network management
and partnership to describe working practices also indicates that at­
tempts to improve interaction often rely on voluntarism and are rarely
founded on formal, enforceable agreements, although contradicting
examples do exist in the literature. One obvious drawback to working
practices that are based on an informal foundation is that in practice,
they may have little power to enforce collaboration by the actors (Hrelja
et al., 2017). They can be a “next-best option” in the absence of better
alternatives.
4.1.3. Step-by-step work processes for collaboration related to public
transport measures
Most of the articles describe working practices as a step-by-step
process, and they focus on how the actors’ relationships, negotiations,
and behavior result in increased or improved collaboration. In a
collaborative process independent actor come together to perform an
activity that none of these actors alone can accomplish: this new
constellation, that often are described as a network or a partnership by
the articles, can be perceived as a fragile construction since the in­
teractions within a network rely on voluntarism. A network can be
defined as a relationship where ‘the items exchanged […] possess
qualities that are not easily measured, and the relations are so long-term
and recurrent that it is difficult to speak of the parties as separate en­
tities’, and where ‘the entangling of obligation and reputation reaches a
point that the actions of the parties are interdependent, but there is no
common ownership or legal framework’ (Powell, 1990. p. 301). Ac­
cording to network theory coordinated actions between actors are sup­
posed to emerge voluntarily because of genuine interdependence, with
mutual trust being a condition for the collaboration between the
involved actors to evolve (Hedegaard Sørensen and Gudmundsson,
2010; Sørensen and Longva, 2011).
One lesson from this is that interaction between actors should be seen
R. Hrelja et al. Transport Policy xxx (xxxx) xxx

Nature of interactions/actors ' intentions

Interactions driven by self-interested

approaches (actors attempting to satisfy their
own needs)

Rules guiding Formal institutions Informal institutions (governance

(governance established not established in law: “soft
actors’ behaviours in law) governance”, norms, traditions etc)

Interactions driven by collaborative approaches

(actors investigating mutual benefits/avoiding bias
and seeking justifiable decisions for all partners)

Fig. 2. Taxonomy of actors interactions and rules guiding actors behaviours3.

as an evolutionary process in the sense that it often develops over time
through recurrent interaction between involved parties. Another general
insight relates to the fact that such processes develop gradually when the
involved actors create a common aim and then agree on measures that
are implemented in order to achieve their objectives. The quality of
collaboration is therefore based on the ability to develop common aims
whilst still providing space for the individual actor to fulfil its objectives.
This means that successful collaboration manages to develop and host
both commonly shared goals and individual actors’ objectives. Actors
can, when this condition is met, jointly develop solution-oriented
knowledge and identify important measures, as illustrated by several
studies (Curtis and James, 2004; Kim and Dickey, 2006; Hedegaard
Sørensen and Gudmundsson, 2010; Maulat and Krauss, 2014; Schmale
et al., 2015). This step is about jointly decide how to prioritise the
identified measures (see, e.g., Schmale et al., 2015) and how to ensure
that the measures are implemented.
With regard to mechanisms for implementation, the articles
emphasise that these range from different forms of contractual agree­
ments (e.g., Khan and Bajracharya, 2007; Maulat and Krauss, 2014), to
freer forms of agreements (e.g., Kim and Dickey, 2006, Hedegaard
Sørensen and Gudmundsson, 2010). The implementation mechanism
can therefore be designed differently depending on the context and the
actors involved; the important thing is that there is a clear under­
standing of how the implementation should be accomplished. Regarding
implementation, there are once again reasons to emphasise the need for
evaluation of outcomes of the working practices in terms of increased
travel, punctuality, cancellations, customer satisfaction and costs, etc.
Most of the articles describe, as already mentioned, working practices as
a step-by-step process, and they focus on the actors’ relationships, ne­
gotiations, and behaviour. Few articles evaluate the outcome of working
practices. This is an obvious weakness.
5. Conclusions
The findings indicate that many countries face similar problems in
the planning of efficient public transport systems and the implementa­
tion of measures for increased travel, despite differences in legislation
and the organisation of their public transport. Indeed, challenges often
arise as a direct result of the design of the legislation and the organi­
sation of public transport. Key challenges concern creating an efficient
public transport system in order to provide good service and simplicity
to passengers, and the integration of land use and public transport
planning. These problems arise as a result of fragmented areas of
responsibility (which deprive actors of resources, e.g., for public trans­
port and the planning and design of urban areas) and conflicting in­
terests among actors, that severely limit their ability to deal with
problems that affect the attractiveness of public transport and its
competitiveness against motoring.
In some cases, actors achieve better conditions for public transport
by changing regulatory frameworks and the organisation of the public
transport system. Such governance reforms include new public transport
organisations that are given broader responsibilities and mandates.
However, in most cases the literature indicates that the actors attempt to
address the problems within the context of current legislation and
organisational structures. Practically speaking, this means that the ac­
tors attempt to overcome the division of responsibilities and improve
collaboration between themselves. This includes attempts to deal with
problems via committees, commissions or venues for “joint decision-
making”, which bring actors together in an effort to get them to agree on
measures, planning principles and implementation. Yet relatively few
publications evaluate the outcome of the working practices in terms of
customer satisfaction, increased travel, etc. The literature favours de­
scriptions and analyses of the “processes”, i.e., the interaction of actors,
rather than of the outcomes with regard to travel and passenger needs.
This points to a need for more research on working practices that depart
from verifiable increases of patronage within existing governance
structures.
The literature is case study-heavy, and its immediate relevance
beyond the contexts described is not necessarily evident. This is partly a
strength, because much of what the literature is cross-examining (such
as collaborations) is clearly context-dependent. However, there is a need
for theoretical advancement, since the theoretical arguments that can be
made constitute the basis for the transferability of the case study find­
ings to other cases. In the previous section, we described an analytical
framework that allows for the study and evaluation of different working
practices. This framework is based on the manner in which the literature
describes problems and working practices employed to address these
problems. In particular, the framework emphasises the importance of
establishing well-functioning collaboration between actors. Many of the
practical attempts to overcome problems that stand in the way of the
creation of an efficient public transport system (as described in the
literature) have to do with addressing problems through collective
management and transforming a situation in which interdependent ac­
tors act independently into a situation in which they act together to
achieve common goals. Such attempts at collaboration occur in
numerous countries, despite differences in legislation and the

9
R. Hrelja et al.
organisation of public transport. For this reason we find it important to
develop knowledge on working practices in practical decision-making
and planning that are capable of creating a synergy that leads to col­
lective actions, and that it is of theoretical interest to understand the
conditions for developing such collaboration.
An important remaining theoretical development need, indicated
above, is to investigate the links between well-functioning collabora­
tions and the outcome in terms of positive patronage changes, higher
customer satisfaction etc. If we investigate this relationship more
deeply, we would probably find cases where positive patronage changes
are a result of collaborative governance. However, this does not neces­
sary mean that positive patronage changes in collaborative environ­
ments are better than positive patronage changes in less collaborative
environments. Future research should discuss this through effective
comparative analysis.
Acknowledgements
This research was done in collaboration with K2—The Swedish
Knowledge Centre for Public Transport. Funding for this research was
provided by the Swedish Energy Agency (grant number 2016:007905).
The Swedish Energy Agency was not involved in the collection, analysis,
and interpretation of data, or in the decision to submit the article for
publication.
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