David MARTENS, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
Karel MARTENS, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel
The Covid-19 pandemic has taken an enormous financial toll on public transport systems’ ridership and financial stability. This paper provides a comparison of transport providers across Europe, identifying how different governance methods facilitate or hinder their resilience during a disruption, and their ability to recover expeditiously. We combine a survey among 17 metropolitan transport agencies, and an additional analysis of financial documents from selected agencies dependent on distinctively different funding methods—fare-based, local funding, regional funding, and national or state-level funding. We find that many agencies did receive emergency national support; however subsidies without structure or direction can deprive transport providers of the ability to plan their recovery—only allowing them to plan their short term survival, and making it difficult to plan for efficient use of resources. This paper develops a typology to structure decision making, based on transit agency management type, and offers solutions that may support financial resilience under each governance type, based on experiences at European transport agencies. We identify policy solutions being tried in different European metro regions, and their outlook for the future. We provide a discussion of what additional research is needed to understand the full impact of the current pandemic, as it comes into focus. Finally, we identify a range of solutions that could feed the conversation on how to optimize the resilience of transit governance systems toward future crises.
Mots clés : Financial disruption|Covid|Transportation|Governance
A105364DW