Citation

Van Egmond P, Nijkamp P, Vindigni G. Int. Soc. Sci. J. 2003; 55(176): 235-247.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, UNESCO, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1468-2451.2003.05502005.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Regulatory reform in EU transport policy has prompted urban public transport authorities to operate increasingly under a competitive market regime. The EU policy favours in particular a system of limited competition through the granting of concessions to public transport operators. This paper reviews the emerging organisational framework and seeks to identify the success conditions for local public transport systems in a sample of 22 European cities. On the basis of extensive field research, a systematic performance table of urban public transport systems in these cities is created with the aim of investigating the impact of four classes of critical success factors on the performance of these systems. In the empirical part both a qualitative interpretative analysis and a recently developed tool from artificial intelligence, viz. rough set analysis, is deployed in order to derive policy relevant conclusions.