Classifying urban passenger transportation services

Abstract

Urban passenger transportation services may be classified by service structure: times (scheduled versus nonscheduled), routes (fixed versus variable), provision (for-hire versus private) and occupancy (shared versus non-shared). They may also be classified by service type: transit (for-hire, shared, fixed-route and scheduled), private (privately provided, non-shared, variable-route and nonscheduled) and paratransit (all other services other than transit and private). As a shared ser-vice, paratransit may be privately provided or for-hire for any combination of routes and times other than fixed-route and scheduled. As a non-shared service, paratransit is variable-route and nonscheduled. Transit services include the: (1) motorbus, (2) heavy rail, (3) light rail, (4) trolley bus, (5) commuter railroad, (6) urban ferryboat, (7) inclined plane, (8) cable car, (9) aerial tramway, (10) automated guideway and (11) monorail. Private services include the: (1) pedestrian, (2) private automobile, (3) private bicycle and (4) private motorcycle. Commuter paratransit services that are shared and privately provide include carpool, vanpool and subscription bus services; if shared and forhire, they include vanpool and subscription bus services. Demand-responsive paratransit services that are shared include the variable-route service, dial-a-ride, and the fixed-route service, jitney. Demand-responsive paratransit services that are non-shared include exclusive-ride taxi and automobile rental. In the U.S., street railway (or light rail) was the primary urban transit passenger service at the beginning of the 20th century; today, it is the motorbus. Cities granted franchises (and therefore monopoly rights) to street railway companies to promote economic development. In addition to providing transit service, these companies often sold electricity in some cases becoming electric utility companies. The perception of excess profits led to the franchise amendments of fare and service concessions, lowering the railways return on investment and the redirection of investments into electric utility operations. The industrys financial condition and ridership declined. Motorbus service was substituted for street railway service in many cities especially from the deliberate action of the holding company, National City Lines, in acquiring 100 street railway companies in 45 U.S. cities and their conversion to diesel-bus operation. The significant decline in U.S. transit ridership following World War II has been attributed to the increase in automobile ownership and the pro-automobile (or anti-transit) reorganization of the geographic and temporal structure of urban passenger travel. Given the transit industrys poor financial condition and the concerns of bankruptcy and lost of transit service, transit companies in many localities were purchased by local governments. Today, all transit systems in major U.S. cities are publicly owned and subsidized. © 2007 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg.