The Evolution of Tactical Tendering in the Netherlands1

The reform of public transport introduced in the Netherlands in 2001 is showing its first interesting results as about two third of the country (excluding the four largest agglomerations) has now been submitted to competitive tendering. Differently from many competitive regimes introduced in other parts of Europe, the Dutch regime aims at stimulating innovation in public transport. To this effect, a new passenger transport legislation allows the transport authorities to give operators the possibility to re-design the transport services (routes, timetables, fares, vehicles, etc.) during competitive tendering and/or during the contract period. As presented in earlier papers (van de Velde and Leijenaar, 2001; van de Velde and Pruijmboom, 2005), these legislator’s aims are not necessarily easy to fulfil as various factual, informational or behavioural barriers can stand in the way of such arrangements.