AMB, host of the OECD working group on public transport

| Subject: Mobility and Transport

On 10 and 11 March, the AMB welcomed the technical Public Transport Market Organisation and Innovation Working Group.

The purpose of this working group, part of the OECD, is to analyse the different ways to manage public transport by looking at the relations between the public administrations and the transport operator companies, and to interpret the impacts that the liberalisation of this sector has had on different areas. The conference was attended by representatives of regions from around the world, whose speeches described different initiatives and successful case studies with regard to public transport, as well as all the factors that must be improved in order to coordinate the transport offering and information.
Joan Maria Bigas, director of Mobility and Transport at AMB, explained the management mechanisms that let the metropolitan administration provide efficient service in the bus network, which is its area of competence.

The AMB provides the public transport service by employing two mechanisms: direct management via the public company TMB and indirect management via different public transport operators. In indirect management contracts, the responsibilities and risks are distributed between the administrator and the operator, under the permanent supervision of the service owner, AMB, which exercises organisation, planning and monitoring functions. At present, the AMB has eleven integrated public transport contracts: nine contracts for daytime services and two contracts for regular night-time services.

Attendees at the working group meeting held at AMB facilities included managers and members of public transport research groups from Japan, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France.

At the meeting, they presented cases of managing bus and rail networks with different distributions between the roles of public and private agents. Based on the different case studies, the importance was seen of the public administration being in charge of service planning and definition, in order to ensure proper coordination between the different transport services. In parallel, success stories were also explained, where the entry of private companies in operating rolling stock has let users' perceived quality be improved.

However, these conclusions are temporary and we will have to wait for the study to be concluded in mid-2017, which is led by this OECD working group on the different ways to manage public transport and the participation that the different involved stakeholders must have.

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