This study investigates the practical merits and limitations of adaptive governance, an approach aimed at guiding the intricacies of climate adaptation in complex socio-technical ecological systems. Despite its recognition as a key strategy, questions persist regarding the potential of adaptive governance as a vehicle for meaningful adaptive change. To address this gap, this paper investigates the governance context of the water-adaptation process to drought and salinity in The Netherlands, with a focus on coastal agriculture in the northern Netherlands. Using an interpretative science approach, the study delves into the experiences and subjectivities of stakeholders engaged in adaptation initiatives combating water-related challenges through semi-structured and conversational interviews. The study presents an exploration of central adaptive governance elements (polycentricity; knowledge and learning; leadership; flexibility and variety; and communication) in theory and relates these to the reality of involved actors. The findings reveal how the aspired polycentric and flexible nature of adaptive governance negatively affects the other elements in practice by affecting collaboration and motivation for adaptation, and observes that (perceived) central leadership is much less influential than expected. The findings contribute to our understanding of the governance of lasting adaptivity, highlighting that the adaptive governance paradigm, although it remains useful, must be re-evaluated for contemporary use. Opportunities for the field are discussed.

Mobility is vital for societal wellbeing, economic growth, social inclusion, and access to essential amenities. However, the current system faces significant challenges, including environmental impact, unequal access, and safety concerns. […]

The development of infrastructure can create synergies across multiple sectors, yet the governance and decision-making processes that drive such transformations often receive insufficient attention. This study aims to highlight key challenges in decision-making associated with the ‘infrastructural turn’ at the intersection of energy and mobility. The case focuses on a public transport provider’s initiative to leverage its metro power grid for the development of public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. We trace how the collaborative decision-making process navigated through various configurations. The initiative challenged established organizational roles and pervasive silo mentalities and ultimately reached two significant milestones after nearly a decade. The findings suggest that harnessing potential synergies requires developing more integrative thinking and allowing sufficient space for joint goal-setting across sectors. We advocate for more research on informal organization and unintended consequences to better understand governance challenges of sustainable infrastructure development.

Cars and roads have helped create modern society. However, their use comes at a cost for cities and their residents, in particular with respect to liveability. To improve liveability, cities are implementing a wide range of measures. This paper addresses the challenges cities face in reducing urban car dependency and provides lessons from their experiences. Major research gaps exist around governance questions regarding real-world policy development to aid in the transition towards sustainable mobility.

Case studies in cities with comparable population sizes and experience in car-reducing measures, namely Copenhagen, Barcelona, Bremen, and Milan, provide new insights for policymaking, all to understand the context in which a policy can flourish and help policymakers make them more successful. These insights lead to a framework of success factors and barriers based on theory and practice for other policy makers to use.

Eight different success factors have been identified to overcome the five barriers and successfully implement their policies. Six originate from the literature and were confirmed in the case studies. The two final success factors of ‘the inarguability of schools’ and ‘the undeniability of hard evidence’, emerged from the cases.

In the cases interviewees identified and prioritised the links between these factors and barriers, and how the success factors can reduce the barriers. This research adds to the literature of real-world policy examples and includes issues of governance that policymakers may run into. The novelty is in the framework of success factors and barriers, based on the experiences of Western European cities with a comparable population size. The framework can be used by both policymakers and researchers to design and compare car-reducing policies.

Workshop 3 looked at the way transport services interact with infrastructure and the spatial environment and the implications of this for both the governance and planning of transport. A wide range of papers covered issues such as the measurement of outcomes on efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability, the value of public transport, activity and mode choice, the planning and governance of public transport, and the effect of external shocks on mobility and planning. These drew on examples from Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia and South America and from countries at different stages of development with a discussion of both theoretical and empirical approaches as well as applications of policy. This report draws a wide range of conclusions from the examples considered with suggestions for both research and policy.

For a long time, mobility policy and research went hand in hand with a focus on accessibility: the possible number of places that can be reached using the mobility system. The focus was on the mobility system providing as much access to places as possible, along with a process of spatial concentration of functions. Traffic flow became a requirement for a functioning society. This need for traffic to flow has had problematic consequences by pushing out other values of space and living. When looking at traffic beyond accessibility, the full complexity of the spatial system comes into focus and requires a broadening of the frame of research and policy. This chapter introduces tools for policymakers and researchers to broaden their frame and embrace real-world complexity, away from optimising for mobility. It presents seven vectors that can help create societal value for policymakers and researchers beyond simply moving through space.

The proposed solutions for sustainable development generally require new links and the involvement of multiple sectors. As a consequence, organizations can rely less on closed and rational analysis-based forms of strategizing; they increasingly see the need for joint strategy processes. However, a joint strategy process challenges the boundaries of the organizations involved, which creates tensions. This paper takes stock of conflicts and uncertainties that organizations which become involved in joint strategizing encounter. Our focal point is the sustainable development of infrastructure. We focus on an explorative single case study on the coordination of heat infrastructure development in the Regional Energy Strategy Rotterdam-The Hague (RES R-TH). The primary data were collected via three sources of information: observations from roundtable meetings, interviews with representatives of the organizations involved in the RES-TH and reflections from participants of these actors in research-led ateliers. We illuminate a wide range of tensions between organizations and identify three categories of dilemmas: input, throughput and outcome. By explicating dilemmas and identifying categories, we discard the idea that a universal solution exists for organizations engaging in joint strategizing. Instead, we provide evidence of different types of decision-making challenges, which emerges from a more granular analysis of the open strategizing process.

Actors experience considerable uncertainty when developing and realizing mobility innovations that can contribute in the transition to a sustainable transport system. Although the role of uncertainty and its handling is mentioned as important in the literature on transitions and innovations, there is a lack of understanding how uncertainty affects decision-making processes and actors themselves. This paper investigates the interplay of uncertainty competencies and governance settings in four innovation cases of Mobility as a Service (MaaS). Our findings demonstrate it is difficult to sustain MaaS beyond a research trial, because actors experience too much uncertainty about governance questions of long-term responsibilities and role distribution. Although individual actors possess effective project management skills and willingness to innovate in a trial context, they are unable to bring MaaS to a next level because MaaS is not seen as a part of a larger design quest in which stakeholders experiment and play with uncertainty through different institutional configurations.

The UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) were adopted by the United Nations as a “universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.” These goals prove to have a strong appeal to managers in both public and private sectors. Despite the popularity of the goals, little is known about the consequences (intended and unintended, desired and undesired) of organisations adopting SDGs in their management practices. Therefore, our research question is: “What is the potential role of SDGs as an accountability mechanism?” The following article will study how organisations responsible for technological infrastructures in the Netherlands use the SDGs as an accountability mechanism. To do this, the authors will first provide an overview of the SDGs and how we conceptualize accountability. We will then present our case study methodology before looking at a single case study based on interviews with employees from three organizations running infrastructure in the Netherlands. Based on this case study, we will provide a broader analysis of the key tensions that are becoming apparent when using the SDGs as an accountability mechanism. In conclusion, we will argue that the SDGs may provide a valuable tool to make organizations more accountable to societal needs, however further shifts are needed in the way the accountability mechanisms are designed in order to ensure meaningful accountability.

The interdependencies between infrastructures are growing. Engineering decision making that earlier was largely confined to a specific sector now requires more and more understanding of how systems interact: a system-of-systems perspective. The article analyzes the effect of that added complexity in a single case study in de Zuid-As, Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and relates the findings to the literature on engineering decision making and project management in complex projects. The article concludes that cross-sectoral engineering decision making has an additional level of complexity that requires governance of uncertainty. Despite this challenge being a well-known challenge among infrastructure operators, it is still not recognized for its importance, and it seems to be a neglected element in collaboration. Key is an open approach in the early stages that goes beyond classic cooperative decision making in engineering and project management environments.

To make the supply of transport services more attractive and sustainable, mobility suppliers and governmental actors expect much from mobility innovations. When developing and realizing these innovations, they experience considerable uncertainty about the future outcomes of implementing these innovations (1), and about other actors' intentions and actions in realizing these innovations (2). Literature on governance under uncertainty often overlooks the experienced uncertainty during interactions among multiple actors. To address this gap, this paper applies a new conceptual model for understanding interacting actor behaviour under uncertainty in the context of two innovative mobility cases in the Netherlands: Mobility as a Service (a digital channel for users to plan, book, and pay for multiple mobility services) and ERTMS (a new European rail traffic control system). Our analysis reveals that actors tend to rely on traditional project management approaches for dealing with uncertainty, even when there is no shared understanding of innovation requirements and scope. However, uncertainty manifests itself most regarding actors’ intentions and actions in the development phase of innovations. This gap underscores the limitations of managing innovations using project management and highlights the need for additional governance approaches to address the major uncertainties that actors face about their mutual relations.

This paper uses stated preference data collected in the city of Rotterdam and discrete choice modelling techniques to study the relationship between public transport and shared micromobility. It assumes a hypothetical condition of integrated systems and studies the relationships of complement and competition between these modes. The findings suggest that shared micromobility modes are viable alternatives as egress modes for metro trips. Shared micromobility can be seen as a complement to metro, yet shared e-mopeds proved to also be a viable option as individual modes for long-distance trips. Different characteristics proved to be important in choices in this context: frequency of public transport use, previous use of shared micromobility, and age. Considering the results obtained, collaboration between shared micromobility and transit operators might benefit them as well as travellers. Collaborations should be designed so that they help travellers to decrease total travel time, even if it implies longer egress legs. However, the costs of these shared modes should not be as high as to prevent travellers to use them as egress alternatives. Finally, young travellers and frequent transit users could be specifically targeted, as they showed to have a better perception of shared micromobility.

To gain ridership, bus services need to offer more than just high frequencies. An attractive system design for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a result of various configurational choices concerning infrastructure, rolling stock and operations. To find out which configurations are preferred by potential and current passengers, a Discrete Choice Experiment was carried out in The Netherlands. For this study, eight BRT characteristics were included. Results (n = 1019) show that four characteristics are valued the most: frequency, service hours, reliability and stop spacing. The attractiveness of three different service formulas or configurations is evaluated. The more conventional bus configuration is preferred by the majority of the respondents. However, a considerable amount (25%) of respondents that prefer this configuration does not consider using this service formula. Configurations that either address offering more passenger comfort or higher capacity, do seem to be attractive to distinct passenger segments who are more likely to actually use the service. These appealing BRT configurations address different types of passenger segments and therefore could coexist on certain routes.

This chapter introduces governance as the ruleset that stakeholders work with when making decisions, in this on how to deal with COVID crisis in public transport. This chapter looks at several countries and the way in which their decisions, shared between authorities (health and transport) and operators, have shaped the effects on ridership. In a brief case study on Amsterdam, the interplay between various governmental layers and the operator is explained and is shown how existing governance shaped the decisions on the COVID response. This chapter ends with the observation on how COVID responses were shaped by the existing governance and that COVID in turn possibly is having the effect of a rethink on the existing governance.

For Europe's urban agglomerations to be economically competitive, it is vital that international destinations be easily accessible. Although much has been invested in the construction of European rail infrastructure over the past century, passenger transport by rail has not grown as fast as transport by road and air. So why do people not use international trains more, even though they have an extensive international rail network at their disposal? Based on a series of in-depth interviews with relevant public and private stakeholders and two expert meetings, we identify the main bottlenecks and constraints. In order to understand the complexity of international rail transport, we have divided the existing bottlenecks into four groups corresponding to four layers of the rail transport system: mobility services, transport services, traffic services, and the physical and digital infrastructure. We formulate concrete policy recommendations for improvements to be made in the various components of the rail transport system.

Public transport can deliver multiple public values, including sustainability, accessibility, and safety. This is a challenging task because actors hold different views in relation to the way in which public transport should work and the outcomes it should produce. The role of governance is to link and coordinate these fragmented views in collective decision-making processes; governance identifies goals and establishes the allocation, amongst diverse actors, of the roles and responsibilities – along with the needed resources and discretionary ability (agency) – for the design and implementation of public transport policies and services. To effectively conduct this task, decision-makers need to embrace, rather than rebuff, the complex interdependencies and conflicts between public values and adopt a whole-of-values, adaptive, and context-aware approach to governance design. Scholars can support in this task, tackling the study of public transport governance through a more comprehensive lens, moving beyond studies with a partial focus on changes in formal institutions only.

Governance research and design has received growing attention in the field of public transport. The chapter expanse how that makes sense and provides a framework to understand and analyse governance in the sector.

Societal infrastructures are the lifeblood of societies, and the sustainability of
infrastructures is very important. Societal infrastructures can experience conflicting spatial claims with other societal infrastructures, disturbing the sustainable situation. The objective of this paper is to design large infrastructures, with a focus on the Drinking Water Infrastructure (DWI), in a more sustainable way by using the resilience concept. To study this, a case study was done in the Netherlands, where an overlap is present between the DWI and the protection zones, and a new railroad and water safety measures in the river IJssel. The case showed that conflicting infrastructures are inflexible and unable to adapt to change due to several reasons in the governance and in the infrastructure system itself. The case was useful for identifying eight design principles to prevent conflicting claims between large infrastructures.

Public authorities are under mounting pressure to promote more sustainable urban mobility, including a modal shift from cars. With an empirical focus on Oslo and Amsterdam metropolitan areas, this paper analyses how the interplay between formal frameworks, informal institutions, and individuals’ agency can contribute to making public transport more attractive in relation to other modes. Findings indicate that formal frameworks, informal institutions, and key actors co-exist and interact in complementary, substitutive, and accommodating manner; they work alongside each other to facilitate collective decision-making on issues ranging from integrating land use and transport to dealing with budget constraints. By identifying these types of interaction, this study shows that, to advance transport sustainability, authorities not only need insight on what policies to design, but can also benefit from understanding how policy-making and implementation unfold. A broader insight offered by the paper is that financial performance goals appear as a main policy driver in public transport, eclipsing sustainability concerns.

Sustainable transport typically requires a broad spectrum of policy measures, with responsibilities shared by different authorities and with various public values competed with each other, such as commuting, health, spatial quality, and economic development. Designing and implementing integrated policy packages, with consideration for the interdependencies between measures and actors is a promising approach and thus an interesting research topic. A large part of the literature on transport policy looks at separate measures and their effects. These measures in reality always work in constellation with other measures and understanding their dependencies in a way to create synergies through packaging has been the topic of theoretical discussions. However, empirical research on policy packaging is sorely lacking. In this paper, we examine the implementation process of packaging of TM measures from the perspective of actors and their distinct roles and interactions. The data is collected by document analysis and interviews with officers in a Chinese city. Several major problems threatening the implementation of policy packaging are detected, including overlooking implementation at district-level, resource competition between measures, and the absence of integrative supervision. It provides a first answer to the discrepancy occurring in the promise of real-world crafting of well-integrated policies for sustainable mobility.