POLICY FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION, PART 3

3- Implementation

The implementation is the final stage of the planning process; actually it is the operational phase, where the plans/projects are realised. The political decisions legitimise this realisation of defined transport masterplans/ concepts/ measures, budgeting, construction of infrastructure, institutional changes, etc. During that phase quality control has to be granted to provide an opportunity of making necessary adjustments.

Implementation is a key problem of today’s transport policy, as we have numerous success- promising instruments leading towards a sustainable transport development, but we have a great deficiency of their implementation.

The instruments and tools for implementation are similar to the instruments in the policy formulation process. The emphasis, however lies on:

  • Project management
  • Participation
  • Public relations and awareness raising

All three are also essential for the process of policy formulation and are dealt with in individual chapters.

The best transport masterplan can be useless when it cannot be put into practice. Some of the most common reasons for the failure of an implementation process are:

  • Insufficient awareness of the problem among decision makers;
  • Insufficient persuasive power of traffic experts;
  • Too little acceptance by authorities and the public;
  • No awareness of the problems among media representatives;
  • Gap between attitudes and real behaviour of transport users (attitudes are dominated by

social values, personal behaviour is dominated by personal interests);

  • Lack of acceptance for unpopular, but necessary measures/ transport policies for an environmentally friendly and sustainable transport development.

The following chapters give hints how to circumvent these obstacles.

Policy Formulation and Implementation

  • The process of implementation

The political decision to implement a transport masterplan or a similar guideline stands at the beginning of the implementation. The individual steps are shown in figure 20.

Participation, the flow of information and awareness raising play an essential role assuring the acceptability by the citizens and simultaneously enhancing the effectiveness of the project. An example of an implementation process shows figure 21.

  • Measures

Individual measures are used in the implementation process after being chosen during the policy formulation phase (see chapter 2.2). Examples of different grouped measures are shown in the following tables 11 and 12.

Groups of measures/ instruments of transport policy

MAESTRO (1999) provides lists of measures split up to the various transport sectors (Road sector, Intermodal sector, etc.)

  • Barriers – Acceptability

It is needless to say that measures are easily accepted, when they do not affect the individual interests. Accordingly the NIMBY (not in my back yard) – approach is quite common. As soon as measures are bound to hurt anybody, the acceptance declines strongly. An example of public acceptability on traffic demand management (TDM) measures shows figure 23.

Acceptability of TDM- measures [%]
Policy Formulation and Implementation

Transport pricing package

Figure 23: Acceptability of TDM-measures by transport users in six European cities (EU-project TRANSPRICE 2000)

Different groups of barriers can be identified:

  • Resource Barriers (material, financial);
  • Institutional Barriers (lacking co-ordination between different organisations or levels of government);
  • Social/Cultural and Political Barriers (lacking social and political acceptability, equity and social selectivity, lacking problem awareness, different interests of the stakeholders);
  • Legal Barriers (legal requirements, law);
  • Side Effects (transcending the original problem).

A detailed table of possible barriers during the implementation process is given in the EU- project TRANSLAND (1999) (Table 13).
Policy Formulation and Implementation

Policy type Policy I      L S          R E
Investment Transport infrastructure network o      o      x      x      x
and services Co-ordination of transport modes o      o      x      x      x
Transport system operation o      –       –       o      o
Planning Regional transport plan xoo–
Municipal transport plan xooo-
Regulation Transport infrastructure approval o      o      x      –       –
Car-use regulations (speed/access limits) o      o      x      –      x
Travel demand management –       –      o      –      o
Trip reduction ordinance –      o      o      o      –
Parking regulations (licenses, restriction) –       –      x      –      x
Vehicle, emission standards o      o      x      x      –
Transport corridor x      o      o      o      –
Subsidies Transport infrastructure funding –      o      –      x      o
Subsidising transport fares –       –       –      x      –
Restrictive Vehicle tax, fuel tax o      –      x      –      o
pricing Parking charges –      o      x      o      x
Road-pricing –      o      x      o      x
Impact fees o      o      x      x      –
Information Information campaigns, education o      –       –       o      –
Car-sharing – – – – –
I Institutional barriers L Legal barriers S Social/Political barriers R Resource barriers E Side Effects
x Barriers with strong effects on the policies o Barriers with medium effects on the policies – Barriers with low effects on the policies, or the policy is indifferent to barriers

Table 13: Barriers to implementation of transport policies (EU-project TRANSLAND 1999, Deliverable 2b, p. 69).

Policy Formulation and Implementation

Only participation and information from the beginning of a planning process on can achieve acceptance. The following suggestions to enhance public acceptability of pricing are taken from the EU-project TRANSPRICE (2000):

  • Objectives reflecting public concerns, positive aims;
  • Perceived traffic problems;
  • Perception of pricing policies as effective solutions;
  • Package approach – providing alternatives;
  • Trust in the proposed measures and in the use of the revenues;
  • Guarantee of equity;
  • Freedom of choice;
  • New cognitive image of the mobility situation.

Policy Formulation and Implementation

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