Political Consequences of Public Transport Contracting

Many contracted public transport regimes undergo drastic changes due to pressure from the public and operators. Nationalisation is uncommon, but there are often large changes in the regulatory environment from this pressure. These changes are theorised to follow a cycle (Ken Gwilliam, “Bus transport: Is there a regulatory cycle?”, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 42, no. 9 (Nov. 2008): 1183–1194). This paper sought new evidence to see how accurate this theorised cycle is and what fuels the cycle. 55 different regulatory regimes in 26 cities were studied for evidence of the cycle and what causes instability. Only one example of a full cycle was found (buses in Shanghai), but there were many examples of partial cycles. This research then proceeded to use Qualitative Comparative Analysis to examine the features of the contracts between operators and regulators to see what factors lead to a stable or an unstable regulatory regime. It was found that most stable bus transport regimes featured no farebox risk, fixed price subsidies and competitive tendering. No conclusion could be drawn about rail transport cases because of the contradictory results.