Modeling local responses to alternative federal transit subsidy policies and regulations

Abstract

This paper presents a model of the decision making of local transit agencies regarding the amount of service to produce, and the use of competitive contracting as a means of service delivery, with particular reference to the impact of external factors, especially federal policies, on that decision. The approach taken is quite novel in that it develops a descriptive model of local agency decision making to predict the effect of such external changes. This represents a quantification of various concepts of political science related to dissatisfaction minimization as a guide to political decision making. By combining this with quantitative models of transit system performance, demand, and cost, an operational model of transit system decision making is developed. Even though many of the elements of this model cannot be quantified numerically, much is known regarding derivatives and relative magnitudes, and this is sufficient to yield very strong conclusions regarding the impacts of policy changes on the amount and manner of production of transit services. This model is used to make such predictions about likely responses to federal policy changes. To test the model's assumption and results, the research also included a survey of transit authorities regarding their likely responses to such policy changes. In most respects the results of the test were quite positive, confirming this particular application and suggesting that this type of model could be useful in other policy analyses as well.