Incentives and Evaluation for Improved Public Transport

In the late 1980’s, competitive tendering was initiated in Sweden to increase efficiency. Recently, however, focus has shifted towards higher quality and patronage. To achieve this, some measures used are passenger incentives payment, quality incentives, and bid evaluation models with weights on quality. The public transport industry has also agreed upon recommendations for some measures. However, it is unclear to what extent these recommendations take departure in research or other empirics. This would not be entirely surprising as the transport research literature are lacking studies on this.

This project will investigate passenger and quality incentives, as well as bid evaluation in public transport. In talks with the industry, great interest has been shown for these questions. Participants from VTI and Urbanet will use quantitative methods and interviews with the industry to test the outcome of incentives contracts, simulate how such contracts should be designed for better economic efficiency, study how quality incentives are constructed and evaluated, and investigate bid evaluation models. All four subprojects take departure in economic theory. The overall purpose of the project is to improve public transport services through better understanding in the industry and new knowledge for the transport research community.