Redundancy in Public Transit. Volume I: On the Idea of an Integrated Transit System

摘要

Conventional wisdom in Public Administration traditionally maintained that functional duplication in public services is wasteful. This position has been recently challenged, and it is suggested that redundant organizational structures can make the execution of a given program more reliable and the design of new programs more innovative. This 4-volume study examines the problem of redundancy/duplication of transit services in the San Francisco Bay Area Transit System. Volume I, this report, examines the present structure of two independent public agencies offering directly duplicative transit services, namely--Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, and the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit). The report discusses such issues as multiorganizational coordination, interagency contracting, role of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, reorganization of Bay Area transit, redundancy and system failure, and economic efficiency and organizational reliability tradeoffs.