Strategic

Work in Progress:

Structured assessment of BRT performance: The University of Sydney team has designed data needs for the econometric models of comparative performance. This data, which has contextual and operational indicators, should be collected by the Observatory. Their needs include data from BRTs and also from routes or buses that feed them. Matters as time of collection, ways in which BRT systems are organized and operated, type of passengers, definition of inputs and outputs from the systems and language and institutional issues are addressed to avoid differences in the data collection.

Exploring the complexity of policy design: an inception report and a literature review have started. The literature review started with the aspects of decision making in funding and financing. Information has been compiled and analyzed to provide an insight of the basic principles that constitute the backbone of institutional analysis, institutional change or reform in general; based on the adopted framework to further focus on public transport from an institutional, funding and financing perspective, analyzing in a structured and critical way the current situation and future challenges, as well as pointing out crucial and potentially problematic elements that influence these areas.

From vision to promise to delivery: this research explores how BRT projects evolve from vision to reality, focusing particularly on how implementers respond, and how projects change as a consequence of claims arising from a) incumbent transit operators and b) emerging actors from civil society such as (but not limited to) neighborhood and environmental activists. In the last couple of months members from PUC and MIT have been working, on one hand conducting exploratory research and on the other reviewing relevant literature, particularly on negotiation, public policy implementation, and available BRT case studies. The exploratory research has included a revision of hemerographic material, compilation of official documentation and a few interviews. This work has helped to identify a list of actors to be interviewed, a list of conflicts to be explored, and a preliminary coding of State responses to claims from stakeholders.