Intercity Bus Transport Research Articles

Attitudes Toward Intercity Bus Travel in Texas

As required by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, a percentage of each state's public transportation funds must be spent on intercity bus transportation development and support, unless the governor certifies intercity bus needs are being adequately met. A study was initiated to produce data necessary to define the current state of the intercity bus industry in Texas. To accomplish this objective, surveys were developed and distributed to the general population, bus riders, and bus companies in the state. A review of cities currently being served by the intercity bus industry was also made. General-population respondents indicated that they would be more likely to ride a bus if there were more express bus service, better station locations, and higher air and train fares. Bus riders indicated they would ride more often if there were improved security measures at stations and on buses, more leg room, more comfortable seats, adherence to schedules, and lower bus fares. Government-owned multimodal transportation facilities, operating subsidies for rural routes, and billboards and signs for advertising intercity service were suggested by bus companies as ways to aid the industry. The review of cities currently served by the intercity bus industry revealed that only 21 Texas cities with populations over 5,000 were further than 16.1 km (10 mi) from intercity bus service, and that most of these cities had access to transit service to an intercity bus stop.

Attitudes toward Intercity Bus Travel in Texas

As required by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, a percentage of each state's public transportation funds must be spent on intercity bus transportation development and support, unless the governor certifies intercity bus needs are being adequately met. A study was initiated to produce data necessary to define the current state of the intercity bus industry in Texas. To accomplish this objective, surveys were developed and distributed to the general population, bus riders, and bus companies in the state. A review of cities currently being served by the intercity bus industry was also made. General-population respondents indicated that they would be more likely to ride a bus if there were more express bus service, better station locations, and higher air and train fares. Bus riders indicated they would ride more often if there were improved security measures at stations and on buses, more leg room, more comfortable seats, adherence to schedules, and lower bus fares. Government-owned multimodal transportation facilities, operating subsidies for rural routes, and billboards and signs for advertising intercity service were suggested by bus companies as ways to aid the industry. The review of cities currently served by the intercity bus industry revealed that only 21 Texas cities with populations over 5,000 were further than 16.1 km (10 mi) from intercity bus service, and that most of these cities had access to transit service to an intercity bus stop.

Barriers to contestability in the deregulated European aviation market

The deregulation of aviation in the United States and intercity bus transport in the United Kingdom initially resulted in substantial fare reductions associated with new market entry. Many new market entrants subsequently left the market and fares increased. International aviation in Europe has been operated by national airlines with price collusion and capacity sharing and a ban on new entrants. The normal economy fares charged on air services within Europe are the highest in the world. Therefore, there is significant scope for fare reductions when the European Community (EC) internal market comes into operation in 1993. Deregulation of market access will, however, leave unaddressed other barriers to contestability in the deregulated European aviation market. The structural barriers to contestability include hub airport dominance by the incumbent airlines, ground handling monopolies, and computer reservation system (CRS) bias. The paper proposes measures to ensure access to major airports for new entrant airlines on equal terms with incumbent airlines and the deregulation of the market for airport ground handling. The EC code of conduct for the neutral operation of CRS for incumbent and new entrant carriers is an important precedent. The strategic obstacles to contestability in a deregulated European airline industry are anticompetitive mergers and predatory pricing. In recent years national airlines have acquired several independent airlines in important European markets. It is recommended that such takeovers be prohibited because of their anticompetitive implications in the absence of competition between national airlines. The large networks of national airlines allow them to pursue policies of geographical price discrimination with reduced fares on contested routes and higher fares on uncontested routes. Price surveillance is recommended to explain fare differences between contested and uncontested routes. It is recommended that the EC competition policy exemption for price consultations between airlines be ended. Without measures to tackle the structural and strategic obstacles to competition in European aviation, its liberalization may have no impact on the present high-cost system.

Intercity Bus Transportation

Intercity Bus Transportation

Air Transport Industries in Wartime

COMMERCIAL transport of passengers and mail by private companies maintaining scheduled services dates from the awarding of mail contracts to private contractors in 1926. Accordingly this form of transport was slightly more than fifteen years old when Pearl Harbor thrust the Nation again into global conflict. For the first time in the United States, civil air transport was called upon to meet the challenge presented by a war of great magnitude. As a background for portraying the status of commercial air transport in the United States at the close of 1941, let us review briefly the salient aspects of those fifteen years of economic change. Commercial air transportation began in the speculative twenties, and experienced its first boom as that decade was closing. Emulating the history of the older forms of transport, its first consolidation movement appeared as the Nation passed into the depressed thirties. The depression years with their aftermath of political and economic uncertainty retarded, though they did not stop, the advance of aviation. The strong promotional effects of the Air Mail Act of 1925 and the Air Commerce Act of 1926 were followed in the early thirties by government efforts to stimulate the growth of passenger traffic in the air and reduce the compensation for maintaining airmail service. The cancellation of the mail contracts, and their subsequent restoration at reduced rates of compensation late in 1934, provided a further stimulus toward development of passenger business, and was accompanied by the divorce of air transport from the manufacture of aircraft, with which it had been intimately associated since 1926. In 1938 the passage of the Civil Aeronautics Act, with regulatory provisions pertaining to safety of operation, inauguration of services, and rates charged therefor--closely patterning those pertaining to railroads and highway carriers-provided the industry with a legal institution, a regulatory tribunal, and a promotional administration. The increasing tempo of economic and political change may be illustrated by these comparisons: while nearly forty years elapsed between railroad beginnings and state regulation thereof (and almost sixty years before the Federal Government intervened), and twenty-five years passed between the inception of intercity bus transport and its regulation by the Federal Government, commercial air transport attained Federal status within thirteen