FARE POLICIES FOR MASS TRANSIT DEFICIT CONTROL: ANALYSIS BY OPTIMIZATION

This paper reports on the analysis of a substantive problem in public policy planning. A dynamic model of demand, supply, cost and revenue relationships in the market for mass transit services in New York City is developed. This behavioral model is then placed in a deterministic optimal control framework to solve for the dynamic sequence of transit fares which optimize several plausible policy objective functions. Among the objective functions used are minimization of operating deficits and fare minimization subject to deficit constraints. The importance of multi-year planning for mass transit pricing policy is clearly established. We also present one way of describing efficient sequences of transit fares in the presence of ignorance of the policy-makers' ultimate objective function. Although the empirical results pertain to New York the analytical techniques seem to have general applicability to other mass transit systems. /Author/ /TRRL/

• Corporate Authors:

  Pergamon Press, Incorporated

  Maxwell House, Fairview Park
  Elmsford, NY  United States  10523
• Authors:
  • Garbade, K D
  • Soss, N M
• Publication Date: 1976-8

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: References; Tables;
• Pagination: p. 237-247
• Serial:
  • Transportation Research /UK/
  • Volume: 10
  • Issue Number: 4
  • Publisher: Pergamon Press, Incorporated

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Demand; Economics; Fares; Marketing; Mathematical models; Optimization; Passengers; Planning; Policy; Policy making; Public policy; Public transit; Subsidies; Tariffs; Travel demand; Urban areas
• Uncontrolled Terms: Optimum
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Old TRIS Terms: Government policies
• ITRD Terms: 285: Demand (econ); 143: Planning; 173: Policy; 744: Public transport; 241: Tariff; 8122: USA
• Subject Areas: Administration and Management; Economics; Finance; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Public Transportation; Railroads; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00149059
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL)
• Report/Paper Numbers: Analytic
• Files: ITRD, TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 17 1981 12:00AM