Public transit agencies make important decisions about the type, frequency, and location of transit services in American cities. Many are governed by appointed boards of directors. Board composition and responsibilities can vary considerably across public agencies, but research into how transit boards make decisions is limited. This paper utilizes qualitative methods to investigate the decision-making processes of public transit boards in the United States. How do public transit boards make decisions? What are transit board member and agency staff perspectives on the value of certain types of expertise, lived experience and diversity among board members? We find that board members and staff view decision-making as an amicable process influenced heavily by staff expertise and with a general lack of representation from riders. We also find that governing structures elevate the influence of elected officials outside of the transit agency who shape the expertise of transit boards through appointment powers.
This paper investigates the delivery of a significant new infrastructure programme of Border Control Posts at ports in Great Britain to undertake checks on food and agricultural imports from the European Union. In doing so it provides an important analysis of how government and industry deliver such projects: providing insight into how legislative decisions and government policy affect critical parts of the global logistics network. Primary data were collected through the use of qualitative interviews with key programme stakeholders. Results from this investigation provide an independent empirical analysis on the delivery of a major infrastructure programme; and codify the nature of the policymaker - port-operator relationship. The findings highlight that the original sums of government funding were insufficient to cover construction costs. The relationship between ports and government has, on balance, been negatively impacted by the National Border Control Post Programme.
This paper examines how the 2026 FIFA World Cup has influenced transit investment across its 16 host cities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. While mega-events are often promoted as infrastructure catalysts, findings indicate the 2026 World Cup functions primarily as a scheduling and framing device rather than a generator of new transit systems. Major rapid-transit expansions directly tied to the event are limited and concentrated largely in Mexico, where centralized authority has accelerated several significant projects. In the U.S. and Canada, fragmented governance and suburban stadium locations constrain new fixed-guideway investment. Most host cities instead rely on corridor improvements, station upgrades, and operational adjustments. The multi-country format further diffuses political incentives for exceptional infrastructure delivery. Overall, in mature, decentralized transportation systems, mega-events are more likely to reshape timelines around existing projects than to produce transformative mobility legacies.
This study presents a novel perspective on integrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into Interim Payment Valuation (IPV) in road construction, addressing a critical gap between spatial technologies and construction financial governance. Despite its fairness, IPV remains constrained by non-spatial, document-based practices prone to subjectivity and delays. Existing digital solutions such as BIM and blockchain face limitations in flexibility and practical implementation. This research reconceptualizes IPV as a spatial decision-making process and positions GIS within a Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) framework to enhance transparency and objectivity. Adopting a bibliometric analysis of 64 Scopus-indexed publications (1999–2023), the study identifies a technocentric bias and limited focus on financial applications. It contributes by reframing GIS as a governance-enabling tool and proposing an incremental, user-centred framework for GIS-based IPV, supporting improved decision-making and payment processes.
Vietnam's rapid infrastructure development is often hindered by site-clearance bottlenecks, delaying project progress and reducing efficiency. This study aims to identify, prioritize, and examine the interrelationships among site-clearance delay factors in public-infrastructure projects. Using a mixed-methods approach, including literature review, interviews, and a survey with principal component analysis, the results highlight key impediments: limited expertise and staff capacity, weak incentive policies for resettlement, project-scale changes, and difficulties with land records. Finance-related issues, such as inflated compensation and delayed payments, are mid-level challenges, while terrain, ancestral graves, and high resettlement costs are less critical but still impactful. Seven latent dimensions were revealed, spanning technical inefficiencies, regulatory complexities, socio-economic challenges, and financial limitations. This diagnostic framework provides policymakers and project owners with clear priorities to reduce site-clearance delays, offering strategic insights for infrastructure management in Vietnam and other developing-country contexts.
Port electrification has emerged as a popular strategy for achieving port, regional, and global decarbonization goals. This narrative review applies the conceptual lens of strategic innovation to interpret contemporary literature on port electrification and understand its structure and drivers as an innovation process. It first summarizes the environmental sustainability challenges in the shipping sector that are driving interest in electrification strategies. It then explores port electrification literature to identify how its technological, policy, and management innovation dimensions are reshaping port business models. Finally, it presents early implementation cases in the United States, including the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Houston, Seattle, and Cleveland. Findings show that port electrification innovations improve efficiency in port value chains, enhance the green port value proposition, and better position ports to attract sustainability-conscious users. The strategic innovation frame challenges ports and stakeholders to envision new possibilities for sustainable management and the hurdles to achieving them.
Kenya faces significant challenges in providing safe drinking water, especially in low-income and peri-urban areas. This article assesses institutional and organizational frameworks constraints to the performance of communally-owned small-scale water service producers (SSSPs), which significantly contribute to safe drinking water access in underserved and unserved areas. The study employs a PESTEL analysis based on in-depth interviews to identify external factors affecting SSSPs. The findings reveal several key factors: political goodwill and interference, funding issues, operating costs, ownership, knowledge, technology and data management, freshwater availability, increasing water demand, and pollution, as well as legal and regulatory frameworks for SSSPs. These findings provide key institutional and organizational insights for advancing sustainable water management.
Current electric vehicle charging infrastructure is significantly inadequate, with the U.S., Europe, and the U.K. requiring over 550%, 5.5-fold, and 350% growth respectively to meet 2030 deployment targets. This shortage of infrastructure limits sustainable mobility and impedes progress toward clean energy goals. Given the substantial investment and complex coordination required, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) represent a viable mechanism for accelerating infrastructure deployment and are instrumental in achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17. This study investigates the key barriers facing PPP-driven EV charging initiatives and proposes strategies to enhance their effectiveness.The objectives of this study were achieved by first conducting a literature review to identify key challenges in PPP-based EV infrastructure. Subsequently, expert input was gathered via structured questionnaires. Finally, Fuzzy DEMATEL, using triangular fuzzy numbers, was applied to visualize cause-effect relationships among the identified factors. The analysis reveals that financial viability and high capital expenditure (C1: 8.107), lack of a regulatory framework (C5: 8.081), grid capacity and reliability (C7: 6.921), and land acquisition hurdles (C8: 6.579) are the most influential barriers to successful PPP implementation. These factors significantly affect investment decisions, policy clarity, and execution efficiency. Other critical challenges include ambiguity in viable business models (C10: 7.216) and complex approval procedures (C4: 5.525). The study recommends targeted policy interventions such as capital subsidies, concessional loans, regulatory streamlining, and decentralized solutions tailored to underserved regions. By uniquely applying Fuzzy DEMATEL to this context, the study offers a structured framework for optimizing PPP models, strengthening public-private collaboration, and accelerating scalable EVCS infrastructure development in India.
As Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) become increasingly integrated into public-sector operations, there is a growing need for standardized procedures that ensure safety, compliance, and operational effectiveness. This study investigates the essential components of UAS Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) from the perspective of public agency practitioners in South Carolina. Employing a two-phase sequential mixed-methods design, the research first surveyed 38 agency representatives using a 48-item instrument derived from the AUVSI Organization Implementation Guide (OIG) and supplemented with commonly observed SOP elements. The instrument demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.975). Quantitative responses were analyzed using a multidimensional consensus framework combining parametric analysis (mean and standard deviation) and non-parametric (interquartile range and median) to identify high- and moderate-consensus SOP components. Findings revealed strong convergence on 31 components characterized by high agreement and low variability. A subsequent qualitative analysis of SOPs, coded with high intercoder reliability (Krippendorff's c-Alpha = 0.93; cU alpha = 0.94), explored how these components were operationalized in practice. The results support a tiered SOP framework: foundational components with widespread consensus and supplemental components adapted to specific operational contexts. This practitioner-informed study contributes to UAS policy development by offering actionable guidance for agencies seeking to design or refine SOPs that reflect both regulatory benchmarks and field-tested realities. This tiered framework offers public agencies a practical roadmap for developing or revising UAS SOPs by distinguishing core components that should be broadly adopted from supplemental elements that can be tailored to specific missions, risks, and organizational contexts.
Achieving safe and reliable water services remains a critical challenge in many rapidly urbanizing cities and is central to Sustainable Development Goal 6. In the Philippines, service delivery is constrained by aging infrastructure, fragmented governance, and weak accountability, slowing progress toward universal access. This study examines household perspectives on water services in Legazpi City, one of the fastest-urbanizing cities in the country, drawing on a large-scale household survey. Using Importance-Performance Analysis and thematic coding, it evaluates five service dimensions: water quality, supply reliability, staff performance, customer support, and billing. Results show consistent strengths in staff courtesy and billing accuracy but reveal persistent concerns about water quality and supply reliability, which households view as essential to daily well-being. Thematic evidence highlights discolored water, weak pressure, frequent interruptions, and poor communication. These findings emphasize the need for infrastructure investment, stronger transparency, and institutionalized user feedback to improve service governance.
Recognizing the role of debt issuance as an important source of funding for public works, this article uses panel estimation methods to examine the dynamic factors influencing long-term debt issuance in America's principal cities. While the random effects multivariate regression suggests that financial factors are the main drivers of long-term debt issuance, the cointegration analyses reveal that debt issuance maintains a long-term dynamic relationship with local financial, economic, and socio-demographic factors. Moreover, the vector error correction estimations show that a long-run relationship exists among local debt issuance and municipal level variables measuring economic, financial, and socio-demographic factors, and any deviations in the short term from the long-run path are slowly corrected over time. The study implies that the dynamic interactions between local debt and municipal factors should be considered when issuing debt for public works.
As Southeast Asian nations face increasing energy demands and waste generation concerns, states have adopted public-private partnership (PPP) models to drive Waste-to-Energy (WtE) infrastructure development. However, WtE PPPs face numerous issues including construction delays, regulatory gaps, and operational inefficiencies. Given the high upfront investments and intangible costs of WtE PPPs, it is crucial to understand the factors influencing their performance, which informs policy decisions and enhances project outcomes. Particularly, this paper extracted critical risk factors from two case studies of WtE PPPs: Jatibarang in Indonesia and Soc Son in Vietnam, classified into three significant risks: legal, social, and operational risks.
Situated in a context of rapid technological innovation, coupled with federal and state efforts to foster sustainability, the continued growth of electric vehicle adoption presents new challenges concerning the capacity of existing transportation infrastructure. This study explores the diffusion, adoption, and prospects for adoption of a new technology: battery electric vehicles within local government fleets. Coupling archival data of municipal characteristics with an original survey of local government officials, this study examines which social, economic, and technological factors shape governmental pursuit of this technology within one culturally dynamic state. A supply-side, top-down framework for installing supportive infrastructure takes a central place in our consideration as the outcomes of that process have led to implementation of key charging stations with geographic significance. Results of our analysis reveal broad interest, though with expressed hesitance, in electrifying municipal vehicle fleets. While the policy diffusion literature places a premium on geographic proximity, municipalities reflecting the strongest prospects for fleet electrification are located within areas with greater public support, investment in capital infrastructure, and higher electric vehicle adoption rates.
This study examines whether a state transportation/highway commission (STC) shapes state highway expenditure decisions, particularly during periods of fiscal stress. Using panel data covering 2006-2020, the results show that STCs exert limited influence on highway capital and routine maintenance spending during fiscally constrained periods but play more significant roles in shaping highway capital spending decisions in normal fiscal years. In addition, variation in the delegated authorities of STC members is associated with differences in highway capital and maintenance spending, indicating that institutional designs and governance arrangements matter for highway spending. The results contribute to the public works management and policy literature by expanding state-level data on STCs and showing how their presence and institutional designs relate to highway spending decisions. It also adds nuance to the cutback management literature for the limited effects of STCs' ability to constrain retrenchment during periods of fiscal stress.
Build-Operate-Transfer is an important tool of PPPs in providing the infrastructure in poor countries such as Jordan. In the context of providing infrastructure in poor countries such as Jordan, the present research study focuses on the water sector, as it was one of the first sectors to use BOTs, to formulate an integrated framework. Mixed methods combined qualitative analysis of international and local practice with expert interviews to establish drivers of investment. A second quantitative phase pilot-tested and enhanced the framework. Findings highlighted major regulatory, financial, and operational drivers of investor participation. The study offers an updated framework and policy recommendations to facilitate private sector participation in Jordanian water infrastructure BOT schemes.
As states and regions continue to face challenges related to watershed conservation, watershed stakeholders have become more dependent on collaborative partnerships to solve complex water conservation and environmental problems. These collaborative partnerships often include programs of payments for water-based ecosystem services (PWES). PWES's are arrangements funded by government or private parties where benefits are offered to ecosystem services providers in exchange for their work on protecting the watershed environment. This paper explores collaborative partnerships of PWES's in the United States with an emphasis on determining the types of governance structures used by the collaboratives. The study finds that PWES's primarily engage in interagency and cross-sector governance practices, and less so with grassroots governance practices. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of collaborative partnerships of these programs through the lens of governance structure will enhance local and regional organizations' abilities to provide the best approach for addressing a particular watershed goal.
This study examines whether metropolitan planning organizations' (MPOs) planning conformity, which is the degree to which regional transportation planning language aligns with federal air-quality requirements, is associated with regional attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). MPOs operate at the intersection of transportation and environmental regulation, coordinating across multiple governments to address cross-jurisdictional air pollution. We measure planning conformity using a content analysis that combines the Institutional Grammar framework with automated text analysis (natural language processing) to compare MPO transportation plans with relevant federal regulatory language. Using a sample of 84 MPOs in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Regions 1-3, we estimate the relationship between planning conformity and 2023 county-level attainment status. Results indicate that higher planning conformity is associated with higher odds of NAAQS attainment, net of institutional, infrastructure, and state-level controls.
Intersections are key components of road infrastructure, with conventional designs being the most common. However, these designs might face capacity and safety issues, prompting the need for alternatives. Alternative intersections, such as reduced conflict intersections (RCIs) have shown improvements in travel time and safety for both vehicles and pedestrians, but public acceptance remains a challenge. This paper introduces the Public Acceptance Scoring System (PASS), a tool designed to evaluate the public acceptance of alternative intersection designs. PASS prioritizes variables such as driver confusion, business impacts, and pedestrian discomfort. Based on a review of existing studies and input from experts at the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), 16 key variables were identified. The results show that newer designs, like the seven-phase and partial median U-Turn (MUT) with a three-phase traffic signal, are likely to receive higher public acceptance, while partial Continuous Flow Intersections (CFI) may struggle due to traffic redirection and business access limitations.
