Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 40

4.6.6.      Traffic police corruption is an issue in many developing cities.  Traffic police often receive low salaries and this, coupled with their powers to fine for moving traffic offences, parking offences or vehicle roadworthiness testing, has resulted in bribes, lesser than the statutory fines, being paid to some traffic police.  The resolution of the issue is complex since traffic police corruption is likely to be only one symptom of larger scale corruption in a city.   Measures such as improved training, reduction of opportunities for direct payments to on-street police (removal of spot fines) may assist but the issue is wider than traffic management.  There are reported success in some cities (for example Bogota) in which the poorly trained local traffic police were disbanded and a performance contract entered into with the national police with the collection of traffic fines privatised.  Such policies have merit and are worthy of consideration although there are likely to be local complex issues to overcome.  It is unlikely that privatised police forces can enforce moving traffic offences and in some

cities, even if the private sector levies or collects traffic fines, the traffic police must still be involved to as a legal offence has been committed^[11].

4.6.7. To summarise, the organisation of traffic police, traffic police operating procedures and traffic police training present intractable issues but they must be faced.  The general directions of police institutional policy for traffic management should be:

a)  Traffic police functions in traffic management should be confined to enforcement and accident reporting; traffic management planning and design should be the function of a professional traffic management agency;

b)  Traffic police should be consulted and participate in scheme development but should not be responsible for that development;

c)  Traffic police training and familiarisation with the role and objectives of traffic management should be improved (see Chapter 5);

d)  The use of private sector agencies to enforce some aspects of traffic regulations (such as parking) should be considered provided the application of the contracts is open to scrutiny; and

e)  Resolving corruption in the traffic police is a wider issue than traffic management and requires attitudinal changes in some traffic police culture.  Some improvements may be achieved by improved training, the reduction of opportunities for direct payments to on-street police (removal of spot fines) and use of the private sector with accountable contracts for procedures such as on-street parking enforcement.

4.7         Institutional development for traffic management in Bank projects

4.7.1.      In 1986, the World Bank Policy Study “Urban Transport”^[12] stated that “there is a pressing need to strengthen institutions.  The institutions responsible for urban transport generally lack the executive, and technical skills to cope with existing situations let alone emerging problems.”  While there are cities with competent institutions in traffic management (like Sao Paulo, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, etc), this is still true of many cities.

4.7.2.      In the past most Bank projects with traffic management components have included some “institutional strengthening” but there are number of apparent problems:

a)  institutional strengthening has dealt with broader transport issues – strategic transport planning, public transport regulation rather than traffic management.  Lack of traffic management experience has contributed to cancellation of traffic management components (e.g. Mexico UTP I and various projects in China);

b)  most traffic management components were relatively minor in a city context and thus it may not always be easy to obtain sufficient city interest or leverage to influence city-wide traffic management changes