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This paper arose from the perception
that a gap existed between the practice of project design
and the formal Bank strategies for transport and urban
sectors as stated in the cited reports. Formal strategies
tend to be too general to be linked meaningfully to project
designs. The paper in hand attempts to close this gap by
putting forward a different, operationally-oriented concept
of urban transport strategy and derives one such strategy
from a review of recent Bank-funded projects. The term
"operationally-oriented" means that the strategy
is expressed in terms of objectives, policies, institutions
and investments, mimicking the structure common to all
individual projects. Projects on which the paper is based
date from the last 15 years. They exhibit a wide diversity
of features, reflecting inherited local conditions, the
nature and rhythms of socio-economic changes underway, and
the vintage of client-Bank relations. Yet, a strong central
tendency is also evident, amounting to a coherent and robust
approach. The core strategy, as this approach is called in
the paper, aims to protect and nurture public transport
services and non-motorized transport modes, with underlying
meta-objectives of equity and environmental sustainability.
