ABSTRACT
Introduction Few policy makers or policy documents miss the chance to call for more integrated transport policy (alongside other calls for more effi cient, more sustainable, safer, higher quality transport and the like). Detailed examination of policy documents and closer questioning of policy makers soon reveals however that integrated transport can mean different things to different people and that there is no widely accepted defi nition of what integrated transport policy means (Potter and Skinner, 2000). The same is also true for the notion of joined-up or integrated government in general: Cowell and Martin (2003), for example, argue that probing beyond the rhetoric reveals a range of diverse meanings and manifestations behind the concept. Moreover, clear statements from the academic or policy literature about what integrated transport is or might look like, or how it might be achieved, are scarce. According to Peters (1998, p. 296) for example, ‘policy coordination is a term used with almost universal approbation but less often defi ned’. What is nevertheless clear is that the notion of integrated transport policy has a number of key dimensions. First, there is a horizontal dimension, which concerns the integration of policies between the various agencies or sectors involved in policy making, or even between departments within the same agency. Second, there is also a vertical dimension which concerns integration between different tiers of government, from the European and national level down to the local level (Vigar and Stead, 2003). These are two of the most commonly encountered dimensions but are by no means the only dimensions of policy integration: various others can be distinguished. There is a spatial (or intra-jurisdictional) dimension of policy integration (Stead, 2003), concerning integration between the same sector in geographically adjacent agencies (e.g. the integration of policy between the agencies responsible for transport policy in neighbouring public authorities). There is also a temporal dimension concerning the integration of policy
documents with different production dates or time horizons and/or the sequencing of policy measures (Stead, 2003; Underdal, 1980). In the specifi c case of transport there is also a very important modal dimension concerning the integration of transport policy (Potter and Skinner, 2000), which can encompass a wide variety of issues including policy packaging, coordinated timetabling, common ticketing, multimodal travel information and planning, and the interoperability of transport equipment. Many or all of these different dimensions of policy integration tend to be confl ated in policy arenas (Cowell and Martin, 2003) and tensions may exist between these different dimensions.
