Collective Action and Regional Transport Policy

Abstract

"In the Netherlands the second long term National Transportation plan provides a new direction in transport policy in order to cope with rapidly growing mobility patterns. The plan focuses on both the improvement or the preservation of the accessibility of important economic centres and the reduction of environmental impacts of transportation. A prominent policy instrument to attain these goals is the restructuring of the organization in terms of the allocation of responsibilities, competencies and financial means in the field of transportation policy. Because of deficiencies in the coherence and effectiveness of former national policy schemes and the awareness that transportation has a maximum functional coherence at a regional scale, the government has launched incentives to create new regional public authorities in this respect. In principal, cooperation between participants in these regions should emerge volunarily. The purpose of the paper is to describe and discuss the problems, impacts and potentials of this reorganization process. For the sake of illustration a particular case, the Twente region, will be highlighted. In the paper the theory of collective action will be used to examine the cooperation in the organization of the transport region of Twente. According to the theory, the prospects for a successful furthering of the common objectives are unfavourable. Present cooperation does not prove the contrary. An attempt will be made to build a model for predicting the prospects of a continuing voluntary cooperation in regions."