Devising a stable funding stream is critical to ensuring a realistic planning process and encouraging co-ordinated decisions. An example is found in the United States, where metropolitan planning organisations (MPOs) were explicitly created for planning and programming federal transport funds (Box 2.2). The goal was to ensure that existing and future expenditures for transport projects and programmes were based on a “continuing, co-operative and comprehensive” (3-C) planning process. One of the most sophisticated examples of metropolitan transport co-ordination can be found in Germany. All large metropolitan areas in Germany have set up a metropolitan transport authority called Verkehrsverbund. Such transport authorities usually bring together all local governments located in the metropolitan area as w'ell as the corresponding Land (or Lander if there are several of them, as in the case of Hamburg).