Evaluation of Past Investment in Urban Public Transportation ()
ABSTRACT
Mobility
is a major concern in cities all over the world. Population and density
increase makes urban mobility more complex to plan and budget. Decision makers
have to choose which transport projects to build and how much budget to
allocate to different types of investments. Cities vary by many characteristics
(size, density, etc.), and different cities have adopted different transport
solutions. Some cities invested more in road networks while others invested
more in public transport (PT) networks. Questions regarding
the amount invested in urban public transport and urban roads and the right
balance between these investments, taking into account the urban
characteristics and the residents’ preferences, has received less attention in
the literature. In this research, we focused on urban public transport
investments in various cities and examine the relationship between public
transport and road network investments, speed, GDP, and modal split. The
results showed that in developed cities, the current investment in public
transport contributes to PT usage and increases PT share. Public transport
reserved routes (as an indicator for PT inventory or past investments), jobs
proportion in the Central Business District(CBD), and public transport supply
were also found to have a positive effect on PT modal split, while motorization
level was found to have a negative impact on PT usage as expected. The analysis
showed that cities invested on average 7-8 thousand US dollars per capita in
the public transport infrastructure, accounting for about 50% of the total
transport budget. Cities with more developed public transport system invested
about 15 thousand US dollars per capita, and allocated 65% of the budget to
public transport. These cities manage to maintain the average public transport
speed in the range of 30 km/h (on average a 1.3 km/h improvement in the public
transport average speed for every 1000 dollar investment per capita). The
investments in cities with developed public transport systems generated time
benefits that covered on average 0.6-0.7 of the investment. Some cities have
B/C ratios higher than 1.0, demonstrating that the time benefits predicted by
the model covered the investment.
Share and Cite:
Sharav, N. and Shiftan, Y. (2017) Evaluation of Past Investment in Urban Public Transportation.
Theoretical Economics Letters,
7, 543-561. doi:
10.4236/tel.2017.73040.