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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