MUTP Definition: post-1990 completed road, rail, bridge and tunnel transport infrastructure projects or a combination of these each costing in excess of USD$ 500 million (at 1999 levels) located either within urban areas or having significant impacts on metropolitan regions.
The OMEGA Centre Research Programme
The OMEGA Centre seeks to examine the growing disquiet surrounding Mega Urban Transport Projects (MUTPs). Their ability not only to be delivered on time and within budget but also to achieve the wider benefits they promise. This is important given the scale of costs and uncertainties associated with their development. Further concerns stem from the transfer of risk and management from public to private sectors. This has failed to deliver increased discipline and reliability on the scale expected.
The work of the OMEGA centre and its international partners responds directly to these concerns. This research into MUTPs in the developed world has been made possible through Centre of Excellence (CoE) grants from the Volvo Research and Education Foundation (VREF). The Centres' Partnership Network is led by senior academics and research students from ten distinguished universities in Europe, Australia, Asia and the USA.
The Centre and our network of partners seek to address the growing international realisation of the need to better understand what constitutes 'success' in MUTPs and other Mega Projects. There is a need to examine more closely the capacity of projects to meet multiple objectives. This is within the context of increasingly uncertain, complex 21st century environments and both global and local visions of sustainability.
The lack of such systematic institutional learning from international experiences of MUTPs has led to the Centre's work being welcomed by numerous influential parties in the transportation field. These include: the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and the Department of Transportation's Volpe Centre for National Transportation Systems in USA; professional organisations such as the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) and Major Projects Association (MPA) in UK, as well as various government and private sector parties concerned with MUTPs in the case study countries.
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