Organising authorities

What are organising authorities?

Organising authorities (OA) refer to a public or publicly-owned organisation with a legal responsibility to plan or regulate public transport services in a specified geographic area.

See the UITP Organising Authorities Division

Developments and trends

The framework in which public transport companies operate is largely determined by the organising authority.

First of all, the organising authority determines the level of competition within a given area or on a given route. Indeed, although public transport has often been supplied in a monopolistic way, another option is to give a temporary concession that is tendered periodically (‘competition for the market’). The government can also establish competition ‘in’ the market, where everyone who complies with general regulations can offer any regular route.

Second, the organising authority determines the ownership regimes: a public transport company can be a public administration, a publicly-owned company at arms’ length from the government administration, or a privately-owned company.

Third, in each of these frameworks, the organising authorities can set some of the characteristics of the supply of public transport by imposing public service requirements (PSR) such as providing accessibility, special fares for designated groups, stringent environmental and accessibility requirements, and commercially unviable routes and time schedules.

Consequently, public transport companies request some sort of compensation for fulfilling these PSR. Moreover, organising authorities often impose maximum prices that will often not enable the recovery of fixed costs. This is certainly the case of public transport modes with high infrastructure costs such as rail. As recognition of this situation, public transport financing also includes public funding.

Writing explicit contracts between authorities and operators (where both the PSR and the corresponding compensations are written down), is becoming more and more accepted as a tool to govern the relations between operators and authorities. Of course, this trend creates new challenges for both parties, and the exchange of good practices in this field will become crucial.

Read more

Contracts between authorities and operators
as a means of ensuring quality public transport
2nd UITP International Conference on Public Transport Financing
The Finance Dilemma: Growing Requirements versus Declining Funds
Contractual Relations between Authorities and Operators
Organisation and Major Players of Short Distance Public Transport

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UITP Organising Authorities Division

Missions and issues    List of members  Working groups  Information for members

Introduction
The UITP Organising Authorities Division consists of two bodies:

- the Organising Authorities Assembly
- the Organising Authorities Committee

The Organising Authorities Committee deals with issues of mobility policy, organisation and funding of public transport. The Committee meets twice a year in one of the member cities.

Missions and Issues

The UITP Organising Authorities Division consists of two bodies:

• the Organising Authorities Assembly;
• the Organising Authorities Committee

The Organising Authorities Committee was founded in 1999 and is hence the youngest committee of the UITP. The first meeting happened in Brussels , 15-16 February 1999.

According to its terms of reference, the Committee deals with the following topics:

The Committee meets twice a year in one of the member cities to discuss the outcome and the further steps of the Committee.

List of members

See the list of members

Working groups

• Corporate Governance
• Quality
• Public transport and social inclusion