Why and how often do authorities remunicipalise urban public transport? The case of France

ABSTRACT

For decades, public transport services in most French towns and cities have been provided on a delegated management basis, by subcontracting to private parties, using calls for tender as a selection mechanism. Recently, however, a number of cities, some of them large, have opted for direct management, moving away from the private, competitive model in favour of public management. Our study answers two questions: What is the scale of this shift? And how can it be interpreted: what are the triggers and motivations behind it? The literature on these questions is sparse, partial and dated. Our database shows that remunicipalisation is no longer an anecdotal phenomenon in France. Our interviews reveal that the motivations are always composite and that political factors are predominant.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban public transport
• local public services
• remunicipalisation
• political rationality
• private/Public boundary
• France
• local government

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our students who contributed to this research, both at Sciences Po Lyon, and at ENTPE (Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l’Etat), in particular our intern Angelika Starzak. We also thank the colleagues who have, by their proofreading, helped us to improve this manuscript, D. Bouf and B. Faivre d’Arcier.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Loi 2019–1428 d’orientation des mobilités; Orientation Law on Mobility.

2. These concepts are explained in the next section.

3. UTP: Union des Transports Publics et ferroviaires.

4. An SEM (semi-public company) is a limited company with a majority public shareholding (51% to 85%), but which is subject to public procurement law (competitive tendering).

5. Centre d’Études et d’Expertise sur les Risques, l’Environnement, la Mobilité et l’Aménagement (Centre for Studies and Expertise on Risks, the Environment, Mobility and Town and Country Planning): a public body under the supervision of the French State, it assists the State and local authorities in drawing up, deploying and assessing public planning and transport policies.

6. Since the LOM, this has been known as the ‘versement mobilité’.

7. French Competition Council. Decision no. 05-D-38 of 5 July 2005 concerning practices in the urban public passenger transport market. (Citations are translated by the authors.).

8. The study of the impact of remunicipalization on network performance is not studied in this text for the double reason of a lack of hindsight resulting from the recent character of the remunicipalization; and secondly, because the only management statistics available (UTP 2021) concern only a fraction of the networks concerned by remunicipalisation.

9. A Métropole is a relatively recent form of inter-municipal cooperations (legislation passed in 2010, 2014 and 2015). It is aimed at larger urban areas (400,000 inhabitants).

10. An SEM (semi-public company) is a limited company with a majority public shareholding (51% to 85%), but which is subject to public procurement law (competitive tendering).

11. These factors are likely to become even more important as the legislative provisions of the LOM (2019) abolish the concept of TOA (transport organising authority) in favour of that of MOA (mobility organising authority), extending the powers of local authorities to cover all modes of mobility.