Transportation Megaprojects Research Articles

Value exchanges within stakeholder networks throughout a megaproject's lifecycle

Megaprojects are complex projects with huge investments and numerous stakeholders. Megaproject value is created by networks of multiple stakeholders conducting value exchange, which refers to the processes involved in satisfying stakeholders’ various needs reciprocally. To understand this intricate dance, by integrating the new stakeholder theory (NST) into the stakeholder value network (SVN) concept, this study proposes a theoretical framework of megaproject stakeholder value network (MSVN) to unravel the underlying processes driving reciprocal value exchange and explore how they change throughout the megaproject lifecycle. Moreover, this study adopts an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design to develop a novel network approach to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze MSVN and identify the critical value exchanges for value creation. An empirical investigation was undertaken on Chinese transportation megaprojects. The results indicate that owners and market stakeholders (especially designers) create the most value in the implementation phase, while the collaboration between owners and nonmarket stakeholders (especially governmental bodies) delivers the most value during the front-end and operation stages. Of the six categorized value flow types identified, communication/evaluation is the most significant for the front-end and operation phases. At the same time, support/opportunity comes to the fore in the implementation phase. These findings shed new light on the value exchange process of megaprojects and guide stakeholders engaged in value creation.

Performance controls and accountability in African transport infrastructure megaprojects: A systematic literature review

Poor performance is common in the delivery of large-scale transport infrastructure. Despite previous studies examining the management of transport megaprojects, there is a lack of systematic reviews on performance Controls and Accountability in Megaprojects (CAMP). We analyze research on CAMP in Africa. Out of the 947 records retrieved, 35 articles published between 1980 and 2022 meet our inclusion criteria. We identify four main research themes: “project governance,” “performance management,” “project conceptual management,” and “complexity management.” Our findings indicate significant weaknesses in project governance and a lack of proper project conception. Practical implications involve restructuring project governance policies and implementing a multi-level project governance model. The research supports recognizing corruption as a characteristic of megaprojects, implementing project governance as a standard management practice, and improving governance in public-private partnerships. Additionally, future research should prioritize integrating and developing policies, strengthening institutions, implementing participatory governance mechanisms, and building capacity for project management.

Error Mastery in Alliance Transport Megaprojects

Human error is a major source of rework, with a project's culture setting the tone for its response and how it cooperates and shares information. This article examines how a program alliance's error culture, which forms part of a transport megaproject, mitigates its errors and rework. We undertake a series of semi-structured interviews to make sense of the experiences of alliance participants about why and how rework occurs, its assessment, and if knowledge sharing occurs when it arises. Our analysis reveals that the alliance effectively utilizes elements of an error management culture to communicate and share knowledge. However, we find the alliance's learning capacity is constrained by its inability to capture and analyze rework-related knowledge, preventing it from building resilience to error. Consequently, we propose a collection of principles that an alliance can draw upon to create an error mastery mindset enabling it to manage its rework risks and unexpected events. The benefits of an error mastery mindset are threefold as it provides the ability to: 1) better support people's well-being; 2) anticipate what might go wrong; and 3) adapt and learn about circumstances where errors and rework occur and re-establish work practices after an adverse event.

Perception of Public Transport Megaprojects through a User Perspective

Perception of Public Transport Megaprojects through a User Perspective

Local community engagement as a practice: an investigation of local community engagement issues and their impact on transport megaprojects' social value

PurposeTransport megaprojects often struggle to offer social value (SV) that meets local communities' needs. This problem is embedded in how local communities' views are captured and incorporated into SV plans through local community engagement (LCE). By problematising the literature, this article aims to identify LCE issues and their impacts on SV plans at the front-end of transport megaprojects.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical lens of the study is the practice theory developed by Schatzki (2016, 2005). The authors conceptualised LCE as a practice and conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with UK practitioners. The authors collected data in three steps from three types of practitioners involved in LCE practice and SV planning: project managers, LCE experts and SV experts.FindingsThe authors identified 18 LCE issues with thematic analysis and clustered them into five themes. These issues impact LCE with five mechanisms. Findings show that a weak link between LCE and SV plans due to the issues reduces LCE to a tick-box exercise and presents a distorted view of local communities. This reduces SV plans to the bare minimum for project approval instead of offering relevant SV to local communities. Addressing the issues goes beyond changing the approach of project teams to engagement (from instrumental to normative) and requires changing the practices.Originality/valueFor the first time, the study uses practice theory to conceptualise LCE as a practice, following the notion of project as practice. The study problematises the literature to address the under-represented link between LCE and SV plans.

Planning Transportation Megaprojects: Paradoxes and Challenges in Planning Complex Projects

Transportation megaprojects have become a routine feature in the development of cities and urban infrastructure. The failure of many megaprojects to achieve the desired performance levels is an issue that has been discussed in several studies in recent years, ascribing it to the inability to plan for complexity and uncertainty. This and other problems that are commonplace among megaprojects are yet to be solved despite the employment of highly experienced professionals and resources. The role of the decision-making process in the planning phase is critical in dealing with the complex and uncertain nature of megaprojects. This paper presents a review of literature related to this topic and argues that a major challenge in the planning phase is a cultural misunderstanding of transportation megaprojects, since the rationale behind the development decisions and planning approaches fails to manage complexity and uncertainty. In this study, we identified four paradoxes that occur in transportation megaproject practice that show that top-down and linear planning approaches should be reformed to become more open-minded, nonlinear, and open. Doing so may benefit regional development and broad communities in the future.

An Evaluation of Cost Optimization Strategies for BRT Projects in Pakistan

In developing countries like Pakistan, economic instability, improper planning, non-optimal design, delays in construction, and unsustainability during the operations of transportation megaprojects cause an unnecessary burden on the national exchequer. Recently, several Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects have been initiated in Pakistan. The detailed evaluation of the cost and capacity of BRT projects in Pakistan revealed that their cost could have been optimized. This research evaluated the first BRT project in Karachi for potential cost optimization through proper alignment of the BRT. One of the major segments of the Green-Line BRT from Surjani to Nagan was evaluated, which is presently designed as an elevated section. Other possible options such as curb-side, two-way side, and median alignments were explored in detail. The study showed that the cost of this section could have been reduced from the existing USD 75 million to USD 61 million by providing a two-way side aligned or curb-side aligned BRT infrastructure without affecting existing capacity. This case study shows that it is necessary to critically evaluate all the possible options while planning and designing transportation megaprojects.

There Is Strength in Numbers: Seven Principles to Contain and Reduce Error and Mitigate Rework in Transport Mega-Projects

Errors cannot be always prevented as they are a normal part of any work routine. Performing rework due to an error can significantly increase construction costs in transport mega-projects. Moreover, rework results in productivity loss, schedule delays, injuries and accidents, pollution, and contamination in projects and tarnish an organization's reputation. Drawing on our empirical research examining error culture and rework, we suggest that developing an error mastery mindset based on seven fundamental principles provides the much-needed ingredients to contain (i.e., enhance detection and recovery from errors as well as minimize adverse consequences) and reduce (i.e., limit is occurrence) error and build resilience in mega-transport projects.

Error culture and its impact on rework: An exploration of norms and practices in a transport mega-project

Rework has been and continues to be a problem during the construction of transport mega-projects. This article examines the error culture of an alliance that forms part of a transport mega-project to determine its effectiveness in mitigating rework. Our article reveals that an error management culture positively correlates with reducing rework and holds a divergent relationship with an error aversion culture. We further show a negative association between an error aversion culture and the ability to reduce rework. It is suggested that more can be done to reduce errors and rework despite the prevalence of a strong error management culture in practice. We thus call for an explicit focus on reducing negative error consequences and developing strategies to handle errors. The article argues that providing a psychologically safe work environment, understanding and focusing on what goes right, and coaching to ensure that learning is transferred from an individual to an organizational level can reduce rework. Our study is the first attempt to examine the homogeneity of error culture (i.e., how errors and their consequences are dealt with) in an alliance mega-project setting. In addition, it provides a new line of exploration to address the issue of rework.

Productivity Benefits of Urban Transportation Megaprojects: A General Equilibrium Analysis of Grand Paris Express

Productivity Benefits of Urban Transportation Megaprojects: A General Equilibrium Analysis of Grand Paris Express

Beyond the Socio-Economic Impact of Transport Megaprojects

For more than two decades, scholars have been escalating asymmetric information issues in megaproject management linking them to enhanced public debt concerns. Most megaprojects turn out to be a burden on economy when constructions are completed. Authorities, meanwhile, continue to promote the advancement of megaprojects with overly optimistic public messages on expected socio-economic benefits. A combination of expertise in the topic, in-depth literature analysis, independent cost-benefit reassessment, and empirical survey of related documentation of three EU transport megaprojects shows political implications to be the essential causes of information asymmetries in megaproject management. Socio-economic over-estimations imply to be useful for obtaining and securing funding commitments at the political level, but then the real project value is often omitted from the assessment. This work takes a wider, strategic approach beyond the usual socio-economic reasoning. The article argues that socio-economic assessment practice is too narrow to grasp the full potential impact of a megaproject. Therefore, a strategic assessment should be performed by public authorities along with an appropriate funding mechanism. This work contributes to science by suggesting a direction to more constructive discussions between scholars and politicians that could lead to more effective future decisions on the overall sustainability of economies.

Mesoscale Infrastructures and Uneven Development: Bicycle Sharing Systems in the United States as “Already Splintered” Urbanism

Public–private transportation megaprojects such as toll roads and rail networks have received attention as expressions of neoliberal urban development processes, but what we call “mesoscale” mobility infrastructures have become increasingly common in the United States. Such infrastructures are large enough to have systemic qualities (e.g., fixed nodes, instrumented networks, and operational requirements) and complex institutional arrangements but small enough in cost and impact that they do not systemically transform urbanization patterns. In this article, we analyze one such mesoscale infrastructure system, bicycle sharing, across three urban regions in the United States: Austin, Texas, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. We argue that bicycle sharing systems in the United States have three key features: (1) widespread expectations of fiscal self-sufficiency restrict their geographical reach to urban centers; (2) they largely follow existing patterns of racialized uneven development, leading to major service gaps; and (3) their implementation involves contingent institutional configurations that create modest openings for steering them in more equitable directions. At the same time, newer venture capital–funded “dockless” competitors have exploited the coverage gaps of station-based bike sharing without departing from their basic market-driven logic. Mesoscale infrastructural experimentation is increasingly central to efforts to increase mobility options in the United States but, when implemented within existing urban political economies, tends to produce scales of infrastructure that are at odds with more substantive forms of mobility justice.

Understanding conflict in transport mega-projects: social impacts and power dynamics in the WestConnex project, Sydney

ABSTRACT Conflicts around transport mega-projects, driven by social and environmental impacts, are increasingly prevalent around the world. While environmental impacts have received significant attention, less is known about how the intangible social impacts of these projects stimulate conflict. Assessment of these impacts is crucial; however, the process is often influenced by the underlying power relationships within neoliberal governance. This paper analyses the discursive context of state-community conflicts in transport mega-projects and explores how power dynamics shape the perceptions of both the intensity and extent of its social impacts. Drawing on a case study of the WestConnex project, a controversial motorway development in Sydney, the paper analyses government policy documents and online community submissions to explore the conflicts around the project. Through critical discourse analysis, the paper provides insights into the nature of power relationships that limit the scope of impact assessment and underpin conflicts.

Asymmetric legitimacy perception across megaproject stakeholders: The case of the Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link

With further emancipation of once subdued or marginalized stakeholders, a growing number of megaprojects face increasingly significant social resistance. Asymmetries of support for the projects emerge, rooted in different perceptions of legitimacy across different stakeholder groups. In this paper, we ask how these diverging perceptions of legitimacy develop across stakeholders of cross-border megaprojects. We conduct a multi-site ethnography at one of the biggest contemporary cross-border transport megaprojects in the world – the Danish/German Fehmarnbelt Fixed Link. Tying together three streams of the legitimacy literature in a new analytical approach, we suggest three dimensions of project legitimacy perception: trust, majority, and morality. In doing so, we provide a new integrative model of legitimacy perception in megaprojects. We illustrate how these legitimacy dimensions dynamically interact. We thus provide new insights on how project legitimacy is continuously renegotiated in megaprojects with implications for future developments of project governance.

Reflecting on How Social Impacts are Considered in Transport Infrastructure Project Planning: Looking beyond the Claimed Success of Sydney’s South West Rail Link

ABSTRACT Urban rail transport megaprojects are promoted as generating positive social change at a metropolitan scale, yet they produce complex unplanned negative impacts at local scales. Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) and its follow-up help decision-makers assess and manage the social and environmental impacts of major projects. Using Western Sydney’s politically-successful South West Rail Link as an example, we identified the practice challenges and governance barriers to applying ESIA and EIA follow-up across spatial scales. These challenges and barriers influence the planning and management of the impacts of integrated urban development and transport infrastructure development.

A Hybrid Fuzzy TOPSIS – Best Worst Method for Risk Prioritization in Megaprojects

Megaprojects are usually complex and in many cases encounter failure in terms of finish late or overspent. This study aims to investigate the critical risk factors behind these projects as well as their priority. Project risk management is a mature research stream. But when focus on megaprojects the amount of research decreases significantly. This research provides a hierarchy of risk structure in Tehran-Rasht railway megaproject and prioritizes the risk factors through a two-phase methodology. This method is a new hybrid MCDM technique consist of group fuzzy TOPSIS and fuzzy Best-Worst Method. BWM is the latest MCDM technique which in this paper, its fuzzy version combined with fuzzy TOPSIS is employed. This research also considers all the project success criteria including time, cost and quality simultaneously and calculates the risk priority Index (RPI) accordingly. The results imply that quality is the most important project success factor and the risk elements with greater impact on project quality, get higher PRI. The identified and ranked risk factors help practitioners and academics to follow the subsequent steps of the risk management process of Iranian transportation megaprojects.

Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia by Max Hirsch

Max Hirsch, Airport Urbanism: Infrastructure and Mobility in Asia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. 232 pp.Air travel in Asia often invokes images of elite businessmen in designer suits traveling by high-speed rail to a shiny new starchitect-designed passenger terminal. International flight can be assumed to be the domain of the elite. In Airport Urbanism, Max Hirsch has us look to the infrastructures that are serving the less-privileged populations of Asia. By focusing on the aviation infrastructures that serve the non-elite, Hirsch provides insight into who he terms the nouveaux globalises and their impact on urban form. The nouveaux globalises are constrained by income or citizenship in their ability to be mobile; yet, they have the desire or the need to fly. They are finding ways to travel internationally outside and alongside the infrastructures planned for the wealthy.Despite the growing passenger base of budget travelers (low-cost carriers operate 60 percent of flights in Southeast Asia),1 Hirsch argues aviation infrastructure has been planned for the wealthy. Iconic terminals filled with designer handbag retailers are not constructed with the budget traveler in mind, nor do they serve that passenger. Because air travel infrastructure does not take the budget traveler into account, the nouveaux globalises utilize a combination of structures designed by experts and what Hirsch calls mobility (21), strategies devised by members of the flying public when their needs are not being met by more formal structures. Hirsch points the reader to the shopping mall kiosks where air tickets can be bought with cash, the far-from-luxurious warehouses serving as passenger waiting areas, and the crowded buses bringing migrant laborers from their employers' homes to the airport. Through examining the mobility tactics of the non-elite, Hirsch illuminates how increasing cross-border mobility is reshaping aviation infrastructure and Asian cities.Hirsch is in conversation with scholars contributing to what has been called the new paradigm, research that views the social as being reconfigured as mobile, with many aspects of social life, civil society, and political participation increasingly understood as being performed through mobilities (Sheller and Urry 2006:210). Hirsch is responding to a particular call within research to analyze how movement is restructuring time and space and impacting urban form (Hannam, Sheller, and Urry 2006). This body of research has explored mobility at a range of scales, from transnational migration to a stroll down the street. Hirsch, too, examines mobility and its impact on Asia's cities at multiple scales, including how cities accommodate increasing international migration and the infrastructures needed to transport people from their homes to the airport. Hirsch argues that policy makers are not planning for the increase of international flight of non-elite populations. As a result, alternative, less visible infrastructures have fulfilled the needs of these fliers.Hirsch is also engaging with the growing body of literature examining infrastructure from a social science perspective. Architects, city officials, and urban studies scholars alike have focused on infrastructure megaprojects. Transportation megaprojects such as urban rail systems or international airports come to signal the economic health of a city, evidence of its global connectivity, and point to its bright future. Not only is Hirsch skeptical of the impacts of large-scale infrastructural projects, but he argues throughout the book that less formal transportation infrastructures can do some of this work, albeit far more inconspicuously. Hirsch's focus on infrastructures which are built from the bottom-up with the non-elite user's needs in mind adds to the growing focus in anthropology on how communities creatively repurpose infrastructure.It is at the intersection of urban studies, mobility studies, and infrastructure studies that Hirsch makes his theoretical contribution regarding the role of informality in urban areas. …

Trans-Eurasian Transport Megaprojects: Project Intentions

Trans-Eurasian Transport Megaprojects: Project Intentions

Разработка инструментария для оценки экологического воздействия при реализации транспортного мегапроекта на примере трансконтинентальной магистрали через Берингов пролив

Разработка инструментария для оценки экологического воздействия при реализации транспортного мегапроекта на примере трансконтинентальной магистрали через Берингов пролив

The Chunnel in History: Breakthrough or Continuity?

This paper places the Channel tunnel project (the Chunnel) in a historical context of privately financed transportation mega-projects. We examine the extent to which the Chunnel represents a break or continuity with the past by looking at the technological, financial and intuitional dimensions of innovation compared to previous projects. We also analyse the project’s economics from a long run perspective. Although rightly hailed as an engineering triumph, the Chunnel’s main innovation was in the scale and form of private financing. Rather than being something completely new, we argue that this was a reinvention of financing techniques commonly used in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The project’s failings in terms of cost overruns, delays and over-optimistic demand forecasts certainly represent continuity with the past. In contrast to previous authors, we argue that the Chunnel should be portrayed as both a financial and economic success story. To support this case, we present a new simplified economic analysis suggesting a 3% to 6% return over the very long term. The Chunnel’s place in history is assured, but its long term legacy and continued relevance will depend in part on how well we learn lessons for delivering the trans-European networks of the future.