Institutional Coordination and Service Delivery Outcomes in Urban Public Transport Systems: A Systematic Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70122/ajbsp.v3i1.10Keywords:
institutional coordination, city public transport, governance, inter-agency collaboration, urban mobility systems, service delivery outcomesAbstract
The rapid urbanisation in rapid growing cities has increased the strain on public transport systems, revealing structural vulnerabilities in governance, institutional coordination, and service delivery outcomes. Whereas infrastructural shortages and operational inefficiencies are often studied, the impact of institutional coordination, as a systems factor in service delivery, is scattered across previous empirical studies. The current systematic review fills this gap by analysing the roles of horizontal and vertical institutional coordination in service reliability, operational efficiency, accessibility, and user satisfaction in fast-developing urban transport systems. The review relied on the Dimensions database during the initial review phase. The Dimensions database was searched to conduct the review in accordance with PRISMA 2020 requirements. Three thousand five hundred eighty-two records have been identified and filtered using pre-set inclusion and exclusion criteria, including research area, publication type, language, topicality, open access and availability. The eligibility criteria were 30 peer-reviewed articles, which were synthesised using qualitative thematic analysis. The review addresses the absence of a synthesis linking horizontal and vertical institutional coordination mechanisms to measurable service-delivery outcomes in rapidly urbanising cities. Results indicate that disjointed governance, overlapping mandates, poor regulatory fit, and less inter-agency cooperation all play a major role in deteriorating service provision performance. On the other hand, the enhanced reliability, operational efficiency, and passenger satisfaction are related to the possibility of integrated planning authorities, unified regulatory frameworks, coordinated multimodal systems, and shared information platforms. The review also establishes institutional alignment as a mediating factor between infrastructure investment and service outcomes. This review further advances the literature by developing a governance-based conceptual framework that explains the relationship between institutional coordination and the delivery of urban transport services. It provides policy-specific suggestions to enhance inter-agency collaboration and governance harmonisation, with a focus on sustainable urban mobility in fast-growing cities.
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