[posted with permission from Frank Montgomery]

"...should be required reading for all researchers and practitioners
involved in the delivery of urban mass transportation. ...promises to
become the definitive coverage of the current state of affairs in transit
privatization in the U.S. at the opening of the 21st century."

So goes the review of my book, "The Private Provision of Public
Transport," in the Autumn 2001 issue of the Journal of the American
Planning Association. I'm writing this note because a UK distributor has
just been arranged. www.profbooks.com is carrying the book, and the title
is in fact currently the "Editor's First Choice" in their Transport and
Logistics Bookshop on their website. Since airmail postage for single
units shipped from the States is prohibitive, it will be cheapest for
those in Europe to obtain copies from Profbooks.

The book started out as a project to see whether decision-making on
providing services in-house or by outsourcing was the result of financial
analysis or political ideology. Interviews conducted in eight cities for
seven case studies indicated the latter, with data analysis generally
doctored to favor the prevailing political view. Republicans
and Democrats were equally to blame for unreflective thinking, whether in
the uncritical pursuit of the private sector or its unqualified rejection.
In framing the debate as a public vs. private one, no attention is paid to
the possibility that public operations could be reconfigured to take on
some of the advantages of private services while retaining those features
that make public operations desirable.

A book by someone writing from a planning perspecive will, of course,
ultimately need to focus on the client, and it is the public transport
user who has no voice in a process where developing any notion of good
service is subservient to obedience to political motivations and beliefs.

There are five chapters covering bus operations, in Denver, Indianapolis,
Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Looking at privatization from a
different -- community -- perspective, I also included two chapters on
jitneys, generally run by low-income, minority operators catering for
their local communities in Miami and New York. Urged on by union pressures
as well as self-preservation, local planners and Democratic politicians
have tried to close down operations which offer a level of service the
public sector has never provided, and have shown little interest in
integrating it with their own. Planners impose their own values in
deciding what service ought to be, failing to appreciate that local users
might like the very reggae-playing non-air conditioned and not always
terribly safely-driven vans that they find scary, and regard the
refrigerated but hard-seated and infrequent and impersonal
government-subsidized monoliths that ply the streets as the
undesirable and inferior good.

While the book focuses on American examples, its content is relevant to
debates about privatization around the world. It has, indeed, been
featured in The Economist, and was presented as part of a programme I
arranged at MIT to brief four members of the London Assembly visiting the
States on transport financing and service delivery issues.

If you are interested in reading the conclusion before purchasing, the
final chapter can be found on my web site at http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond.
A related article I wrote for the Los Angeles Times is also available
there. The order form on the site should only be used for ordering
directly from Harvard (which requires $9 shipping for orders to Europe,
but is postfree within the United States and to Canada). The book
can also be ordered through any US bookseller. If you are in a part of the
world not yet mentioned, please verify shipping costs at
www.barnesandnoble.com or www.profbooks.com as against directly from Harvard.

I'll be pleased to receive any comments from those of you who read the
book, and would also appreciate recommendations for purchase by university
libraries if you feel this is appropriate. Thanks!

                                                --Jonathan Richmond
-----

Jonathan E. D. Richmond (617) 864-6394
79 JFK St.
Cambridge MA 02138-5801
USA

e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://the-tech.mit.edu/~richmond/