The French Law on Urban Solidarity and Renewal (SRU) and Mixed Public Transit Authorities: A Tool for Inter-Territorial Mobility Governance?

In 2000, the French law on Urban Solidarity and Renewal (SRU) encouraged the development of mixed public transport authorities under a new institutional form to promote cooperation between the authorities in charge of public transport at different levels. Ten years on, this article analyses these authorities in order to draw an assessment of the existing situation and to open discussion on the local implementation of the reform. Faced with the increasing challenge of making urban policies more interactive, beyond sectoral or spatial divisions, do the mixed public transport authorities constitute a real stake for a new governance of mobilities, which might better take into account the ‘interterritoriality’ of contemporary problems? The initial analysis of these authorities highlights the flexibility of the tool with regard to the diversity of local situations. These authorities appear to be a fragile cog in the interterritorial architecture in spite of the extent of the stakes that they bear regarding intermodality and ‘sustainable mobility’. These results should however be nuanced by recent changes and the creation of new mixed authorities not studied in this article.