Resource information
Transportation has always played a
fundamental role in the formation of cities. Ports evolved
where rivers flowed into the ocean or at the confluence of
major rivers; sleepy outposts at the junction of major roads
became bustling trading hubs. Although this relationship
between transportation and development has been evident
since the creation of the earliest urban societies, all
previous conceptions of the city were made obsolete by the
advent of the industrial revolution. The transportation
challenges raised by this new city centered on congestion.
Early forms of transit provided some relief, but as motor
vehicles became common place, existing urban streets were
overwhelmed. As roadways were enlarged and expressways
constructed, the population of new suburbs expanded and the
automobile became the dominant form of transportation in
many developed cities. To address issues at this scale,
cities and countries around the world have developed new
institutions that sit between the scale of local and higher
order governments. The example of Boston, presented in the
accompanying figure, is illustrative. The city of Boston has
a population of 620,000, but its metropolitan area is
commonly defined to include 101 cities and towns with 4.5
million total residents. An organization known as a
Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) that covers the
territory of all the cities and towns in the region has been
created to coordinate planning of major transportation
investments. The primary purpose of the current study is to
provide an overview of the ways in which systems of
metropolitan transportation governance are organized in a
six different countries in order that these systems might
provide models for World Bank client countries currently
developing institutions for managing urban transport
problems. The best method for understanding how each of
these systems operates is consulting the county case studies
provided in the final section. This study is organized as
follows. The first section presents an overview of several
themes that run through the cases. In the subsequent
sections, each case is reviewed individually.
