Governance structure for transport corridors

Abstract: Transport plays essential roles in almost all economic activities and our daily lives. Transport flows are often agglomerated in soͲcalled transport corridors linking urban and/or commercially important areas. Clearly, it is desirable for transport to be efficient and sustainable, thus there are several onͲgoing initiatives to develop major, often transnational, transport corridors.Diverse stakeholders are affected by and/or involved in the development of these corridors, including travellers, transport buyers, transport service providers and transport authorities (local, regional, national and transnational). Governance of the corridors can be regarded as the interactive involvement of these stakeholders in their development and subsequent management.This is a licentiate by publications based on a covering essay that summarises and synthetises four articles. The topic focuses on the development of a framework for designing governance structures for major transport corridors, by examining the variables that should be considered, the structural and procedural organisational possibilities, and both stakeholders’ participation and interactions. A qualitative research approach has been applied, as deeper understanding of the underlying issues is needed. Several studies have been performed, in conjunction with the Bothnian green logistic corridor project, to illustrate key concerns. These studies have included literature reviews, studies of documents describing governance of major European transport initiatives, and interviews with key individuals involved in the development of European transport corridors. An international study has been established and supervised to gather experiences from other research projects, including an open workshop for discussion between representatives of various stakeholder groups. In addition, a case study of the Bothnian corridor has been performed, including focus group discussions with principal stakeholders. Main findings from the literature studies concern both the design of governance structures and their socioͲpolitical integration. The findings show that there is no universal solution for governance structures as they have to be adapted to the social, economic and political context, and should have a sufficient flexibility to meet changing requirements. They also show that collaboration between public, private and other stakeholders to address issues earlier handled by a single authority is becoming increasingly common, also within the field of transport, particularly when public investment budgets are restricted. Another main finding is that broad stakeholder inclusion is advantageous and engaged leadership crucial for a successful outcome. Both structural and procedural aspects of a governance structure influence the outcome and need to be considered when designing one. The international study and the workshop confirmed most of these literature findings and additionally highlighted the need for clear goals, objectives and rules for collaboration. Stakeholders´ diverse needs of connecting to a governance structure were discussed in the workshop. The document studies and the interviews enhanced knowledge of European transport corridor establishment and management practices.