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.