Transit Corporate Planning: A Methodology for Trading-off Fares, Service Levels and Capital Budgets

摘要

The study describes the application of corporate planning concepts to the transit industry. The first two chapters describe the process of adopting transit goals and objectives, identifying the constraints and developing performance standards. Chapter 3 develops performance standards for the objective of maximizing ridership subject to external subsidy constraints. A performance standard, defined in terms of additional passenger trips per dollar of net revenue, is derived and quantified using marginal revenue and fare elasticity concepts. The performance standard, referred to as the passmark level, is the value of passenger trips per dollar which maximizes ridership while exhausting the external subsidy constraint. The passmark level is used in Chapter 4 to analyze trade-offs between fare and service policies and to plan service changes at the route level. Finally, Chapter 5 is concerned with the development of capital budgets for the transit property using the passmark and other concepts of corporate finance.