Since the beginning of the British deregulation experience in the public
transport sector, many contributions have focused the issue, wether the
public transport sector is contestable or not. Following the first
hypothesis, the most proper organizational policy would be to deregulate
the activity. But if the hypothesis of the natural monopoly structure of
the sector should turn out to describe more properly its economic
reality, so the privatisation strategy to be adopted would be the
competitive bidding procedure.
Actually, no country and no city works with an unique mode of
regulation. If we gather the different modalities of public
transportation (line services, chartered service, school buses, cabs,
excursion buses, and so on) and conceive them as a unified though
differentiated system of services, we will conclude that everywhere
relative deregulation goes along with stricter regulation. Sorrowly,
there are very few cities where the different offers of the public
transportation "menu" are treated in an integrated manner.
Should we not therefore consider that all these service options are to
be part of a unified public transportation policy, which would aim to
supply an alternative to private transport through a rich and
differentiated service pallette?
This differentiation policy is not brand new, there are already many
contributions on that topic. But it opens a new front in the regulation
debate, that is the differentiation and segmentation of the regulation.
So we should no longer be in search of an ideal regulation type
(focusing merely the line services), but an ideal regulative
segmentation including the different service modes. We should also
already advance, that the ideal segmentation will depend on concrete
local features, especially on the concrete geography of the urban
transportation market. And that a regulative segmentation structure will
not last forever, but shall to be adapted dinamically to the changing
realities of the transportation market.
So my question to the discussion group: is there someone who is dealing
(or is interested in it) with this kind of question? Is there some
literature on this topics, especially by the advanced regulation
theorists? How to treat (to model) it theoretically?
I will be very grateful to everyone who gives me a hint.
Prof. Dr. Joaquim José Guilherme de Aragão
University of Brasília
Mestrado em Transportes
Faculdade de Tecnologia, Anexo SG-12 1o. andar
Universidade de Brasília
Campus Universitário - Asa Norte
70910-900 Brasília - DF
BRAZIL
Tel: + 55 61 302 2714
Fax: + 55 61 272 0732
mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
WWW: http://www.unb.br/ft/enc/sict/
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