Paving the Way for Better Governance in Urban Transport The Transport Governance Initiative

This book presents an innovative democratic framework that ensures public participation, based on applying principles of good governance to facilitate urban transport decision-making in an integrated and structured manner. While – given the need for mobility in cities – transport is crucial for urban development, problems such as the fragmentation of institutions, decision-making, and unequal knowledge concentrations represent major hurdles to effective governance outcomes (especially those that go beyond technical and regulatory aspects). 

Substantial investments continue to be pumped into the urban transportation sector, with cities lacking the necessary capacities or governance mechanisms to ensure optimal returns on these investments. The book introduces the transport governance framework, which is intended to provide an integrated and structured approach to facilitate decision-making processes in the urban transport sector, focusing on how decisions are made rather than what decisions are made. It also discusses the initial testing of the framework in several cities across India. In addition, it examines the application of the TAPC (transparency, accountability, participation, and capacity building) principles of good governance to key aspects of urban transport – policy, planning, standards, budgets, execution, and regulation.

Dr. Kala Seetharam Sridhar is Professor at the Centre for Research in Urban Affairs, Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore. She is a leading international scientific author and has written and edited several books published by Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer and Sage. She was a senior advisor to the Global Development Network’s global project on urbanization, and has done various research projects on urbanization for the Asian Development Bank. She was a member of the Scientific Committee of the Urban Transitions 2016 Conference, co-hosted by Yale University and Elsevier. Globally, she is among the top 10% of authors on the Social Science Research Network.

Ranjit Gadgil is Programme Director at Parisar. An IIT graduate, he is currently engaged in research and advocacy related to urban governance. At Parisar, his primary focus is on city planning, sustainable mobility, road safety, and urban environments. Some of the initiatives that he has been involved in are the development of a city bicycle plan and formulation of a pedestrian policy. An avid cyclist, he uses the bicycle for recreation and to commute in the city.

Chhavi Dhingra heads the Capacity Building program for Cities and Transport at WRI India, where she develops strategies for capacity development in the urban mobility ecosystem. She had led various initiatives on behalf of WRI in India like authoring training modules for the Government of India and leading trainings in several states in India. Chhavi was also responsible for the co-creation of WRI’s online knowledge sharing platforms like WRI Cities Hub and TheCityFix Learn. She is currently the national lead for Integrated Sustainable Urban Transport Systems for Smart Cities (SMART-SUT) project funded by the German government.