ABSTRACT
Diverse modes of community participation have long been recognized as essential to good decision-making in public transport. Early on, however, scholars and practitioners noted that the wide range of techniques and approaches can lead to less-than-ideal situations, particularly participation “fatigue”.
This chapter grounds its analysis of the state of community participation in public transport decision-making in the specific case of two Chilean cities: the national capital, Santiago, and a small regional capital, Temuco-Padre Las Casas. In October 2019, massive demonstrations against Santiago’s once-beloved Metro revealed that poor participation is undermining efforts to position public transport as the backbone of a sustainable transport system. These significant cases offer a warning and a rich set of lessons regarding participation and governance structures to improve sustainable transport planning in itself, but also to ensure resilience of governance systems, which will increasingly face significant challenges arising from climate crisis and other risks.
