Book Offers
Insight on Barriers to Transportation Development
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“Barriers
to Sustainable Transport” encourages
public policy makers and scientists to
consider the often overlooked role that
institutional
roadblocks play in stalling the development
of transportation systems.
SPP
Professor Roger Stough, who co-edited the
book with Piet Rietveld, explained during an
interview, “This book examines the often
unappreciated fact that it is not primarily
technical barriers that delay the adoption
of new processes and technology that will enhance
mobility and accessibility. Rather it is mostly
institutional barriers such as friction in
intergovernmental relations; outmoded and sometime
ill-targeted regulations; and rules that slow
adoption and the rate at which we are able
to enhance or maintain mobility and accessibility
levels and thus sustainability.” |
Although institutions are
increasingly being recognized as important
determinants of travel behavior, little attention
has been paid to them in the literature on
transport and sustainability, Stough said.
That’s because their impact is often
indirect and difficult to trace, he added.
According to the book’s
editors, institutions are defined as social
rule structures that shape human interaction. “They
can be both formal and informal. A sample of
institutions that influence the transport sector
and which have far-reaching impacts on long
run sustainability goals is the following:
the rules for the public and private sector
in the supply of transport infrastructure and
public transport, property rights affecting
the development of new infrastructure, international
harmonization of fiscal policies, perceptions
of mobility rights of citizens, the emergence
of trust-based co-operative networks of firms,
etc.,” according to a synopsis written
by the editors.
The book attempts to uncover
the mystery of institutional influences on
transportation by focusing on several themes,
including an examination of how private and
public sectors cooperate in transport infrastructure
supply; the barriers that exist in the implementation
of transport policies; local sustainable transport;
and freight transport.
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