Sustainable transportation institutions and regional evolution: Global and local perspectives

Abstract

Sustainable transportation institutions must promote efficient transport utilization and reflect regional demands that often do not align themselves with traditional patterns of political organization. These institutions must confront political legitimacy, economic efficiency and social representation as well as functional effectiveness. Increasing interdependence of mobility demands in terms of safety and efficiency and the embeddedness of transportation in civil society has caused issues of equity, fiscal management and environmental externalities to put new stresses on old slowly evolving transport management institutions. Key challenges to sustainability relate to effective use of technology in management of international trade and the management of spatial externalities in complex urban infrastructure investments. In both cases significant progress has been made using regional strategies, but tension continues between issues of efficiency and privatization on the one hand and equity and public good responsibilities on the other hand. Institutions evolve and change with these cross pressures and different cultural contexts. Examples of these evolutionary changes are explored in terms of the interaction between technology and governance in international trade and in the frameworks intended to manage metropolitan transportation in the US.