Transport Governance initiative: A toolkit

The Transport Governance Initiative aims at assessing the quality of governance in the urban transport sector. Doing so requires a definition of a set of characteristics of “good governance” that are universally acceptable and thus eliminates the possibility of a subjective judgment creeping into the assessment.

A widely accepted framework, used here, is the TAP-C framework. All indicators developed contains the need for processes to be transparent, people and institutions to be accountable for their decisions and actions (accountability being contextual – one may be accountable to laws, to certain rules, to the public at-large etc.), processes to allow for public participation and for organizations to have the appropriate capacity to carry out their prescribed duties and functions.

The “Transport Governance Initiative” began in October 2015, in partnership with Parisar, World Resources Institute and Embarq (India). There are other partners involved such as ISEC in Bangalore, CEE from Kolkata and CAG from Chennai who are assessing the tool-kits for their region. ICLEI South Asia was awarded this project in October 2015 ICLEI and is supporting WRI to conduct assessments of national level and Delhi city institutions and authorities pertain to urban transport. Based on toolkit provided by WRI India ICLEI South Asia will be conducting assessments at national level and Delhi state and prepare an assessment output report.

The motive and deliverables of the project is to engage with Delhi state and national level officials and improve decision making processes in the urban transport sector by developing a framework for assessing governance and decision making based on principles of Transparency, Accountability, Participation, and enhanced Capacity, also called TAP-C.