Please post your responses to the Unit 1 questions to share them with Michal, the course moderator, and other participants.
Hello,
you're more then welcome to exchange ideas and ask questions. If you need, I can provide you also some extra examples and topics.
Please mind, that until this Sunday I'm out of office, so my answers can be not as rapid, as usually
Regards,
Michal
Hi everyone!! I am not sure if this is the correct place to post the responses to the Unit 1, anyway, I ll introduce myself... I am Lucila Spotorno, 30 years old. I have been graduated as a lawyer in 2008, and since then I have been working in transportation when I was awarded by the National Government of Argentina with a grant funded by the World Bank. It was a full programme for young professionals in planning, regulation and management of public transport. Afterwards I was hired to work at the National Minister of Transportation to coordinate a special component of a World Bank Loan, the metropolitan agency of transportation. In 2012 I began working for the Buenos Aires City local government mainly in the metropolitan transport issues close to the Head of Transport and Transit for the city of Buenos Aires. He designated me as the city ´s representative at the metropolitan transportation agency, organization shared by the Federal Government, Buenos Ares province, and the city of Buenos Aires, announced by the president in October 2012. The agency ´s institutional infrastructure is under development; I have been part of these negotiations and responsible for drawing the legal instruments to constitute MTA. I have taken part in technical ´s meetings to elaborate metropolitan transport policies.
Argentina, as you already known, is a federal country. Transportation is an local matter, while the competence is federal when the transport has to pass from 1 jurisdiction to another, for example trains. Lack of coordination, among others, has been a problematic concerning due to the several jurisdictions with different interests.
In addition, I am working at Fundacion Pensar, a think tank, to coordinate the elaboration of the federal transport plan for 2015. We are elaborating public policies and guidelines for the transport sector and leading several regular meeting with outside experts and politician related to different means of transportation (ports. Trucks, railways, subsidy and so forth)
This course will provide me examples of successful authorities around the world, and address potential legal barriers and political obstacles. The interactions with other mates will provide me with the latest information, good practices and types of public transport agencies. Coordination between jurisdictions is one of the most challenges for democratic governments.
Best wishes, from Argentina
Lucila
Dear Lucila,
nice to hear from you. Shall you need some extra information - just ask.
Michal
Hi. I´m Peter Bánovec and I´m working for City of Bratislava, capital of Slovak republic for Chief engineer office.
We as the city are responsible for ordering PT services from our in-house PT operator. Our goal is to learn how we can provide better services for public and how to organize such an office for metropolitan authority. To see some experiences from abroad.
Dear Peter,
it's nice to hear from you, we could see each other in Stuttgart, I remeber you are also drving buses, aren't you?
Michal
Dear Michal,
yes, you are right and we saw each other in Stuttgart. Also is true that I´m part time bus driver here in Bratislava to have direct connection to public transport.
I´m glad to hear from you.
Peter
Hello, my name is Eline Malleret, I work for Preston City Council (UK) as part of my master internship in urban planning in Lille (France). I am a project officer for the URBACT ENTER.HUB programme, stating as European Network Exploiting Territorial Effects of Railway Hubs and their Urban Benefits. This project aims at exchanging good practices around hubs between partners to help drafting a Local Action Plan (LAP) for each city. In each local context a Local Support Group has been created to work on the strategy to adopt and is composed by transport stakeholders and local authorities’ representatives. Preston has no MPTA because:
- The City Council is not the transport authority, the upper tier authority is (Lancashire County Council)
- public transport is deregulated in the UK, meaning that transport operators are free to provide whatever services they wish and transport authorities have little or no control on setting fares or timetables for example, which hampers the creation of powerful MPTAs , exception made for large metropolitan areas in the UK which were granted specific authorisations to do so
- Preston in itself is not a metropolis, however we can talk about metropolitan area of a larger area in which 1/4 million people live.
However, I am still interested in following this course as, with the help of the ENTER.HUB project, we are looking at improve public transport connections from and to the railway hub within the regional catchment area and therefore we think that keeping dialogue and communication between the current members of the Local Support Group after the project is the key to a successful implementation of our LAP. We don’t know yet whether we should keep the working-group format or evolve towards a more institutional organisation, hence our interest in looking at various types transport organisations.
I also hope to gain broad knowledge on transport management in metropolitan areas thanks to this course for my own interest as a student in urban planning. And of course, exchange with participants and professors is always a good way to learn more!