Scaling-up public investment for low-carbon urban transit: lessons from Mexico and Peru

IIASA YSSP Report, Laxenburg, Austria: IIASA

Volltext/Full text

Under what conditions do governments in emerging economies scale-up public investment for mass transit systems in cities? In addressing this policy question, this project develops a political economic explanation of sustainable transport investment in middle-income economies. It moves beyond political will and individual leadership as explanatory factors and instead offers a more structural understanding of when political support for accelerated public investment is likely to emerge. As its research design it employs a comparative policy analysis of public investment programs for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in Mexico and Peru, two middle-income democracies in Latin America. Unlike Mexico, which deployed 11 BRTs between 2003 and 2017, Peru adopted a single BRT corridor in 2010 and never developed a national investment program, despite substantial multilateral assistance. I argue that the variance in these policy outcomes (scaled-up investment in Mexico vs. meddled investment in Peru) can in part be explained by how investment decision-making is shaped by the relationship between national and sub-national decision-makers, and by how this relationship is conditioned by institutions. My methods combine process tracing and expert interviews. The results of the empirical assessment generally support the argument, and link to several ongoing research debates at IIASA, including political feasibility (Brutschin et al. 2021), diffusion of policy and innovation (e.g., Wilson et al. 2020; Zimm 2021), decent living standards (e.g., Rao and Min 2018; Kikstra et al. 2021), low-energy demand scenarios (e.g., Grubler et al. 2018), and scenario design for global energy modelling.