New organizational models in European Local Public Transport: from Myth to Reality

The Europeanisation of public services is frequently considered to have created pressure for Member States to progressively converge towards a new dominant organisational model, based on deregulation, de-integration and privatization. However, while in some sectors (eg. electricity, telecommunications and postal services) European directives played a crucial role in boosting a common evolutionary path, in other cases, mainly related to local public services, this influence remained feeble and more uncertain. The empirical insight on EU Local Public Transport Services carried out in this paper, based on 9+1 country study reports, aims at investigating if and to what extent this new dominant paradigm actually emerges, or if and to what extent more fragmented and heterogeneous outcomes prevail. The study, conducted through a common analytical grid, mainly concentrated on qualitative aspects (planning and governance of services, provider of services, process of regulation, method of funding), do not want to draw conclusions on the adequacy of the single organisational form, but mainly to investigate the ongoing trend in order to facilitate mutual understanding and learning. The emerging outcome is that the public role in Local Public Transport is still widespread and that a major theoretical and analytical focus should be directed to the ability of the principal-competent public administration to play its role in an effective and sound manner, while often too much attention is payed to the characterisics of the agent-operator (public-private, big or small, foreign or national, etc.).