IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/trapol/v13y2006i3p191-203.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Performance targets in transport policy

Author

Listed:
  • Marsden, Greg
  • Bonsall, Peter

Abstract

The measurement of performance in the public sector has become increasingly important in recent years and it is now commonplace for transport organisations, and local and national governments, to publish performance goals for service supply and quality. Such commitments, when time referenced, are known as targets. This paper, explains how changes in management style, consumer rights legislation, contractual obligations and other factors have combined to make management-by-targets increasingly common in the public sector. The advantages and disadvantages of management-by-targets are illustrated through discussion of the processes and experience of setting transport targets in UK national transport policy. We conclude that while some of the targets have had a significant impact on policy makers, managers and their agents, the effects have not always been as intended.

Suggested Citation

  • Marsden, Greg & Bonsall, Peter, 2006. "Performance targets in transport policy," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 191-203, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:13:y:2006:i:3:p:191-203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967-070X(05)00107-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bonsall, Peter & Beale, Jo & Paulley, Neil & Pedler, Annette, 2005. "The differing perspectives of road users and service providers," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 334-344, July.
    2. S. M. Grant-Muller & P. MacKie & J. Nellthorp & A. Pearman, 2001. "Economic appraisal of European transport projects: The state-of-the-art revisited," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 237-261.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tuominen, Anu & Himanen, Veli, 2007. "Assessing the interaction between transport policy targets and policy implementation--A Finnish case study," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(5), pages 388-398, September.
    2. Antti Talvitie, 2008. "Model, process, technique, and the good thing," Transportation, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 375-393, May.
    3. Kweon, Young-Jun, 2010. "Data-driven reduction targets for a highway safety plan," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 230-239, August.
    4. Marsden, Greg & Kelly, Charlotte & Nellthorp, John, 2009. "The likely impacts of target setting and performance rewards in local transport," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 59-67, March.
    5. Marsden, Greg & Rye, Tom, 2010. "The governance of transport and climate change," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 669-678.
    6. Rietbergen, Martijn G. & Blok, Kornelis, 2010. "Setting SMART targets for industrial energy use and industrial energy efficiency," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4339-4354, August.
    7. Agostino, Deborah & Steenhuisen, Bauke & Arnaboldi, Michela & de Bruijn, Hans, 2014. "PMS development in local public transport: Comparing Milan and Amsterdam," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 26-32.
    8. Marc-Edouard Schultheiss, 2022. "Assessment of the Bus Transit Network: A Perspective from the Daily Activity-Travel Organization of Travelers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-20, February.
    9. Manca, Davide & Brambilla, Sara, 2011. "A methodology based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process for the quantitative assessment of emergency preparedness and response in road tunnels," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(5), pages 657-664, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maria Börjesson & Jonas Eliasson & Mattias Lundberg, 2014. "Is CBA Ranking of Transport Investments Robust?," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 48(2), pages 189-204, May.
    2. Thomopoulos, N. & Grant-Muller, S. & Tight, M.R., 2009. "Incorporating equity considerations in transport infrastructure evaluation: Current practice and a proposed methodology," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 351-359, November.
    3. Cherry, Christopher R. & Adelakun, Adebola A., 2012. "Truck driver perceptions and preferences: Congestion and conflict, managed lanes, and tolls," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 1-9.
    4. Dimitriou, Harry T. & Ward, E. John & Dean, Marco, 2016. "Presenting the case for the application of multi-criteria analysis to mega transport infrastructure project appraisal," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 7-20.
    5. Shreya Das & Debapratim Pandit, 2013. "Importance of user perception in evaluating level of service for bus transit for a developing country like India: a review," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(4), pages 402-420, July.
    6. Cavill, Nick & Kahlmeier, Sonja & Rutter, Harry & Racioppi, Francesca & Oja, Pekka, 2008. "Economic analyses of transport infrastructure and policies including health effects related to cycling and walking: A systematic review," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 291-304, September.
    7. Nikolaos Thomopoulos & Susan Grant-Muller, 2013. "Incorporating equity as part of the wider impacts in transport infrastructure assessment: an application of the SUMINI approach," Transportation, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 315-345, February.
    8. Bert van Wee, 2011. "Transport and Ethics," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14281.
    9. Salling, Kim Bang & Leleur, Steen, 2015. "Accounting for the inaccuracies in demand forecasts and construction cost estimations in transport project evaluation," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 8-18.
    10. Elena Lopez & Emilio Ortega & Andrès Monzón, 2011. "Measuring territorial cohesion impacts of High-Speed Rail at different planning levels," ERSA conference papers ersa10p620, European Regional Science Association.
    11. Kenton B. Walker & Gary M. Fleischman & Eric N. Johnson, 2011. "Perceptions Of Management Accounting Services," Global Journal of Business Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 5(1), pages 111-123.
    12. Gössling, Stefan & Choi, Andy S., 2015. "Transport transitions in Copenhagen: Comparing the cost of cars and bicycles," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 106-113.
    13. Karen Lucas & Bert Wee & Kees Maat, 2016. "A method to evaluate equitable accessibility: combining ethical theories and accessibility-based approaches," Transportation, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 473-490, May.
    14. Olsson, Jerry, 2006. "Decentralization of Governance and Financing of Public Roads in the Philippines in the 1990s," Philippine Journal of Development PJD 2004 Vol. XXXI No. 2-, Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
    15. Sallam, Walid & Ahmed, Osama, 2020. "The socio-economic assessment to evaluate the potentiality of developing the rural community in Upper Egypt," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 8(2), pages 143-165.
    16. Marcela Martínez & Carolina Rojas & Ana Condeço-Melhorado & Juan Antonio Carrasco, 2021. "Accessibility Indicators for the Geographical Assessment of Transport Planning in a Latin American Metropolitan Area," Geographies, MDPI, vol. 1(2), pages 1-19, September.
    17. van Wee, Bert, 2016. "Accessible accessibility research challenges," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 9-16.
    18. Gutiérrez, Javier & Condeço-Melhorado, Ana & López, Elena & Monzón, Andrés, 2011. "Evaluating the European added value of TEN-T projects: a methodological proposal based on spatial spillovers, accessibility and GIS," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 840-850.
    19. Guiver, J.W., 2007. "Modal talk: Discourse analysis of how people talk about bus and car travel," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 233-248, March.
    20. Salling, Kim Bang & Banister, David, 2009. "Assessment of large transport infrastructure projects: The CBA-DK model," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 43(9-10), pages 800-813, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:13:y:2006:i:3:p:191-203. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30473/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.