Transit services in the United States are in trouble. Ridership has
dwindled, productivity has declined, and operating deficits have
widened. The traditional approaches to running transit
systems--government planning or operation of bus and rail services,
government subsidization of private operations, heavy regulation of
all transit modes--have failed, and there is little hope of their
ever succeeding under current practices. But public transportation
cannot simply be abandoned. Can it, then, be made more
self-supporting and efficient? The authors of this book say it's
time to rethink the fundamental structure of transit policy. The
book focuses on street-based transit--buses, shuttles, and jitneys.
(While street-based transit in the U.S. today usually means bus
service, in other times and places streets have also been served by
smaller vehicles called jitneys that follow a route but not a
schedule.) The authors examine a variety of transit services:
jitney services from America's past, illegal jitneys today, airport
shuttle van services, bus deregulation in Great Britain, and jitney
services in less developed countries. The authors propose that
urban transit be brought into the fold of market activity by
establishing property rights not only in vehicles, but also in curb
zones and transit stops. Market competition and entrepreneurship
would depend on a foundation of what they call " curb rights." By
creating exclusive and transferable curb rights (to bus stops and
other pickup points) leased by auction, the authors contend that
American cities can have the best of both kinds of
markets--scheduled (and unsubsidized) bus service and unscheduled
but faster and more flexiblejitneys. They maintain that a carefully
planned transit system based on property rights would rid the
transit market of inefficient government production and
overregulation. It would also avoid the problems of a lawless
market--cutthroat competition, schedule jockeying, and even
curbside conflict among rival operators. Entrepreneurs would be
able to introduce ever better service, revise schedules and route
structures, establish connections among transit providers, and use
new pricing strategies. And travelers would find public transit
more attractive than they do now. Once the system of curb rights is
sensibly implemented, the authors conclude, the market process will
take over. Then the invisible hand can do in transit what it does
so well in other parts of the economy.
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