Connected Institutions: Using Platform Powers to Advance Transport

This perspective paper analyzes selected policy strategies for transforming transport. It identifies four primary objectives: enhance economic efficiency, increase equity, reduce negative externalities, and improve the user experience (4Es). It then develops the framework of persuasion, police, purse, and platform powers (4Ps), which are available to governments to implement change and pursue their objectives. In a series of cases, it illustrates those powers, particularly the underappreciated platform powers, the formation and promulgation of standards, which are themselves the key technology for connecting institutions, showing how the establishment of technical standards transforms existing transport and lays the groundwork for new opportunities.