The ups and downs of a public transport reform: the case of Transantiago

Andres Gomez-Lobo

Working Papers from University of Chile, Department of Economics

Abstract: In Santiago, the capitol of Chile, an ambitious reform of the public transport industry, aptly named Transantiago, was introduced in February 2007. Serious design and implementation problems were immediately evident, creating one of the most important social and political crises in Chile since the return to democracy more than 20 years ago. In this paper we review the Transantiago experience, identifying the main design, institutional, contractual and implementation mistakes associated with the reform and the painful consequences that these failures generated among the population. We also review the policies that were implemented to address these problems and that enabled the system to provide a reasonably satisfactory service by late 2009. We believe that documenting and reviewing the Transantiago experience is important for policymakers so that analogous mistakes are not made in other transport reforms in developing countries. This may be particularly relevant now that several countries are considering or implementing reforms similar to Transantiago, for example the SITP in Bogotá, Colombia.

Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tre
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.uchile.cl/uploads/publicacion/479b ... b5889d03b0353b8f.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:udc:wpaper:wp354

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Chile, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mohit Karnani ().