The research uses Federal Transit Administration Section 15 data to investigate the operating costs of 13 heavy-rail and 13 light-rail urban mass transit systems for the period 1985-91. A Cobb-Douglas technology is used to investigate various types of economies of scale. The principal findings are: (1) Adding additional passenges to an existing network and schedule of services involves zero marginal cost for heavy-rail systems, and small additional costs for light-rail systems. (2) Adding additional trains, and passengers, to an existing network leads to a less than proportionate increase in costs. (3) An expanded route network results in mild increases in unit costs for the large heavy-rail systems. The smaller light-rail systems display reduced unit costs with an expanded network. The research suggests that the minimum efficient scale for rail operation is approximately 25 route miles.


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    Title :

    Scale Economies in Rail Transit Systems


    Contributors:
    I. Savage (author)

    Publication date :

    1994


    Size :

    22 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




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