Challenges in the development of national policies on transport

National governments have responsibility for national transport infrastructure, including roads, railways, ports and airports, but they also provide the regulatory and governance structure within which regional and local governments, private operators and transport users operate. While there is a considerable literature on infrastructure development for the different modes, there has been relatively little research and literature on the ways in which national governments carry out their responsibilities for nation-wide regulation and governance of transport. As a contribution to filling this gap, the World Conference on Transport Research Society established a Special Interest Group on National and Regional Transport Planning and Policy in 2014 (https://www.wctrs-society.com/specialinterest-groups/topic-area-g-transport-planning-and-policy/). Its primary objective is to promote research relating to regional and national transport planning policy to improve the economic, environmental and social environment globally. The topics the Group plans to explore include the history of national transport planning and policy processes and implementation, path dependencies in national and regional transport planning and policy processes, and an assessment of regional and national transport planning and policy processes. As a first step, the Group issued a call for papers for the 14th World Conference on Transport Research in Shanghai in 2016, with a specific invitation to submit historical reviews of national transport policy development in different countries. Authors of these reviews were invited to consider, in particular: the history of national and regional transport master plans; the procedures for developing national and regional masterplans are made; the institutions involved; the role of public participation; and the frequency of any updates. Authors were also asked to consider the objectives of the master plans, the indicators used to monitor the success of the masterplans, the policy measures and packages considered, and the intentions for implementation and monitoring. It was envisaged that, in due course, the Group would be able to collate a compendium of such reviews, to a common structure, thus facilitating international comparisons and transfers of good practice. This topical collection includes six shortlisted papers from the Shanghai conference. One, considering France, adopts a traditional approach in considering policies on road and rail development. Four offer historical reviews of national policy in Austria, Germany, Hungary and Japan following the suggested structure in the call for papers. The sixth looks, across six countries, at national policy in support of urban transport. Zembri-Mary [1] reviews the development in France of competition in rail infrastructure investment, the privatisation of motorway companies and the growth of public-private partnerships, and assesses the impacts of these on project evaluation. She identifies an increased emphasis on public consultation, environmental assessment and risk management, and suggests that these have helped reduce most project risks. However, she notes that risks remain from optimism bias, and that the wider socio-economic appraisals now conducted still fail to consider the distribution of risks among project This article is part of Topical Collection on The development of National Transport Policy