Urban Transport Strategy. Management in Developing Countries John A Cracknell, страница 72

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8.1.1.      When traffic management is funded under Bank, or under other international agency, it rarely is a “stand alone” investment and is included as part of wider urban transport projects.  Furthermore, the boundary line between traffic management and “modest infrastructure” is difficult to draw, e.g. (i) the improvement of a single capacity constraint, such as widening a narrow bridge, necessary to ensure consistent capacity along a corridor, may be classed as a “traffic management” component in some projects or (ii) a bus lane aimed at protecting buses from the effects of traffic congestion at a specific junctions may be “traffic management” whereas a similar bus lane grouped within a network may be classed as “mass transit”.  Care is necessary in deriving general conclusions from so-called “traffic management” components.

8.1.2.      In the last 10 or so years, significant “traffic management” participation by the Bank and other international agencies has taken place in about 32 projects, of which:

a)  World Bank - 29 projects;

b)  Inter American Development Bank – 2 projects;

c)  Asian Development Bank – 1 project; and

d)  European Development Bank – (TBD) projects.

8.1.3.      For the 17 out of the total of 32 projects for which cost data are immediately available, investment in traffic management totalled about US$450 million; typically, “traffic management” represented an average of either (i) about 10% of total urban transport project costs or (ii) about 30% of costs if extensive bus priority was involved^[32]).

8.1.4.      In the case of World Bank, Implementation Completion Reports (ICR) are available for some projects.  However, the effectiveness of the traffic management components is difficult to assess from the ICR’s.  Thus the following issues and observations are largely subjective but borne out by the evidence from a number of projects.

8.2         Long implementation periods:

8.2.1.      Most past urban transport projects have had long and in some cases extended, implementation periods (Mexico UTP 11 years, Tunisia UTP I and II 8-9 years, Jamaica 9 years etc).  It is not possible to determine whether the traffic management components extended over the same periods as the projects but it seems likely.  The effects of long implementation periods on traffic management are considered to be as follows and suggestions to alleviate the problems are made in subsequent sections:

a)  Political commitment and changing priorities –implementation of traffic schemes requires political commitment.  Long implementation periods often span a number of city administrations, policy priorities are changed and components cancelled (e.g. implementation of all the TSM components of Mexico UTP was cancelled despite considerable design effort); and

b)  Relevance of traffic management components – supply side traffic management (as opposed to demand management) is aimed at the alleviation of short term traffic congestion problems and at providing immediate operational improvements and efficiency impacts.  In many cases, traffic management components are designed prior to project appraisal to overcome the problem of slow start up and slow disbursements.  Quite often, there is protracted delay between project design and loan agreement and commencement of project implementation.  This delay can be many years as has been the case for proposed projects in Mumbai, Vietnam, Moscow, Manila and no doubt others.  By the time of implementation, the situation has changed – traffic has increased, roads have been built, political commitment has changed and so on – traffic management projects designed years before may no longer be relevant.

8.3         Lack of Ownership