Patrick S. McCarthy

COST STRUCTURES OF PUBLIC TRANSIT SYSTEMS: A PANEL DATA ANALYSIS

Abstract Results from numerous cost studies have generated conflicting results on public transit production technologies. Because prior studies have employed various sub-samples of public transit properties, the diverse results may either reflect alternative technologies or sampling differences. Based on a panel of nearly all transit systems reporting for Section 15 (US National Transit Data) purposes from 1986 to 1994, this paper explores whether public transit production technology differs by size and operating characteristics of the system. The results indicate that US transit properties are heterogeneous with different production technologies, which implies that transit cost analyses based upon a set of heterogeneous systems will generate incorrect inferences on public transit cost and production structures.

PUBLIC POLICY AND HIGHWAY SAFETY: A CITY-WIDE PERSPECTIVE

Based upon a unique panel data of 418 incorporated cities and 57 unincorporated areas over a 108 month period from 1981 through 1989, this paper analyzes the highway safety effect of highway speed limits, seat belt use laws, the availability of alcohol, restrictions on the common site sale of gasoline and alcohol, and traffic enforcement. The estimation results find beneficial effects associated with traffic enforcement and speeding arrests appear to have a larger beneficial effect on fatal accidents than those for drinking and driving. There is little effect from speed limit and seat belt use laws. Increasing the number of alcohol licenses, on the other hand, leads to more fatal accidents. And the effect of banning the common site sale of alcohol and gasoline is to increase fatal accidents in incorporated cities outside metropolitan statistical areas but little effect elsewhere.

New Vehicle Consumption and Fuel Efficiency: A Nested Logit Approach

Using data from a 1989 household survey of new vehicle buyers, this paper develops and estimates a nested logit model of new vehicle demands. In comparison with the more restrictive multinomial logit model, which assumes that the error terms are uncorrelated, the results support a nested structure of vehicle choice in which the error terms for purchases within the same fuel efficiency category are correlated. Among the findings, improvements in vehicle size, safety and quality increase a make/models demand. Females, lower income households, younger consumers, non-white purchasers, and buyers in more densely populated areas exhibit higher demands for more fuel efficient vehicles. The results also indicate that vehicle demands have an approximate unitary elasticity with respect to capital cost and are elastic with respect to operating costs.

Subsidy and public transit performance: A factor analytic approach

The need to measure and evaluate transit system performance has led to the development of numerous performance indicators. However, depending upon the indicator, we oftentimes reach different conclusions regarding transit system performance. The research reported in this paper uses factor analytic methods to generate a set of underlying attributes (factors) that capture the performance of public transit systems in Indiana. Similar to what is reported in the literature, this study finds three attributes that best describe transit system performance: efficiency, effectiveness, and overall performance. Based upon systemsÕ factor scores, the study finds that systems scoring highly on one attribute generally perform well on the remaining attributes. Further, there is an inverse relationship between system performance and subsidies, a finding that supports performance based subsidy allocations.

Further evidence on the temporal stability of disaggregate travel demand models

Current evidence on the transferability of disaggregate travel demand models is inconclusive. Adding to this body of research, the present analysis focuses upon the temporal characteristics of work trip behavior in the San Francisco Bay Area. Using before and after data sets associated with the BART Impact Travel Study, multinomial logit models of work trip modal choice are estimated. The results indicate that the general form and the coefficient estimates of a pre BART model are transferable in time. Moreover, when updated to reflect BARTs presence, the models predictive success and its implied elasticity measures are generally accurate, relative to those implied by reestimating the entire model on post BART data. Finally, as economic theory would predict, elasticity measures of the service related variables were found to increase over time.

A study of the importance of generalized attributes in shopping choice behaviour

The research reported in this paper focuses upon the qualitative characteristics associated with a travelers shopping activity, and examines the role which these factors have in determining destination choice behaviour. By exploiting factor analytic methods to generate a set of qualitative or generalized attribute indices, interest is centred not only upon the significance of these indices, but also upon the components of each index. With data obtained from a San Francisco Bay Area Travel Survey, multinomial logit analysis is employed to estimate the model. Moreover, to identify the differential influence of generalized attributes, the model is separately estimated for suburban and central city subsamples and, in the latter case, a simultaneous destination–mode choice model is developed. The results demonstrate that generalized attributes derived from attitudinal information are significant inputs into an individuals choice of shopping area. In addition, policies which focus upon the time, safety, and parking availability components vis-à-vis comfort aspects of the shopping excursion will be more effective in obtaining desired changes in the existing pattern of travel.

The Effect of Privatization on Public Transit Costs

In an effort to reduce operating deficits, increase productivity, and improve the quality of services, the public transit sector has been moving away from public ownership and operation and towards a franchising arrangement whereby a local government authorizes a private firm to manage and operate the citys public transit system. Profit maximization considerations imply that private managers have stronger incentives for cost efficiency. One such example is the city of Indianapolis which began privatization efforts in its transit operations in 1996. Based upon monthly data from January 1991 through March 1997, this study examines the effect of privatization on the citys cost of providing mass transit. The primary implication of the study is that Indianapolis has experienced an annual 2.5% reduction in operating costs since privatizing the management of its public transit system.

Operating subsidies and performance in public transit: an empirical study

Based upon several studies analyzing the effects of public transit subsidies on a systems performance, there is a consensus that public transit subsidies have increased a systems effectiveness but compromized its efficiency and overall performance. In addition to providing an extensive review of recent work on this topic, the present analysis extends prior empirical research in two significant directions. First, this study controls for cross-section heterogeneity and autocorrelation that may otherwise seriously bias the resulting estimates and invalidate statistical tests. Second, in addition to examining the effect of subsidy by source (local, state, and federal), the paper statistically tests for differential subsidy effects by system size, a topic on which the literature has been surprisingly quiet. Based upon an analysis of panel data for fixed route public transit systems in Indiana, subsidies have no general effect on transit performance. Rather, transit system size significantly influences the effect that subsidies, both in total and disaggregated by source, have on performance. Further, a simulation analysis indicates that redistributing subsidies with no change in the total subsidy level will have little impact upon transit performance, a finding which may have important implications for evaluating alternative allocation schemes.

Effect of speed limits on speed distributions and highway safety: A survey of recent literature

This paper examines recent work on the effect of motor vehicle speed limits on highway speeds and highway safety. The review is empirical and concentrates on identifying the quantitative effects that changes in regulatory speed limit policies on interstate and non-interstate roads have on the distribution of speeds and traffic safety. Among the findings, small speed limit changes on non-limited-access roads will have little effect on speed distribution and highway safety unless complemented with speed-reducing actions. Also, the 10 mph increase in rural interstate speed limits increased nationwide mean speed and speed variance by < 4 and 1 mph respectively. Further, notwithstanding higher rural interstate speed limits leading to speed adaptation on non-affected roads, the evidence is consistent with a zero system-wide effect. Implications for further research relate to the importance of controlling for confounding factors, aggregation, the use of alternative methodologies, and the importance of enforcement in affecting speed distributions and highway safety.

A PORTFOLIO CHOICE MODEL OF THE DEMAND FOR RECREATIONAL TRIPS

Consumer choices of recreational trip-making involve a number of related decisions, including destination, trip frequency, length and timing of trip(s), and choice of mode(s). Previous analyses have generally developed tractable discrete choice models by limiting their focus to one or two decisions and conditioning on the others. The analysis presented in this paper takes a more general perspective by assuming that consumers choose one out of a set of trip portfolios which are made up of alternative destinations, trip frequencies and durations. The model is applied to recreational fishing activities, and produces estimation results that are consistent with the hypothesis of random utility maximization. Choice elasticities are calculated and indicate that portfolio demands are fairly elastic with respect to changes in water qualities and travel costs.