The Round Table to assess reforms of urban transit systems, entitled “Privatisation and regulation of urban transport systems”, took place in Paris. It was chaired by Mr. Yves Crozet of the Laboratoire d’Economie des Transports (LET), based in Lyons (France). The background reports were by Dr. Rosário Macário (Instituto Superior Tecnic, Lisbon Technical University, Portugal), who focused primarily on the broad trends driven by urban transit reform; Mr. Matthew Karlaftis (National Technical University of Athens, Greece), who looked more closely at the cost implications of reform initiatives; Prof. Martin Wachs and his co-authors (Rand Corporation, Los Angeles and University of California, Berkeley, United States), who focused on changes in labour relations stemming from regime change in transit activities; and Mr. Rainald Borck (University of Munich and the Deutsches Institut fürWirtschaftsforschung, or DIW, Germany), who shed new light on how the relative importance of socio-economic categories shape the urban transit reform process at the local level.