Project Summary
California’s large metropolitan areas are each served by multiple public transit agencies, while the two largest Golden State metros – Metropolitan Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area – are served by dozens of transit providers each. This plethora of regional transit operators in each of these two very large metropolitan areas raises questions about the efficiency, efficacy,
and equity of this organization and delivery of public transit service. Would transit riders find it easier to travel on one, or just a few regional transit systems? Would organizational efficiency, intermodal coordination, labor relations, route and service planning, and fare policies and payments be streamlined by agency consolidation? Or do more, smaller transit agencies offer benefits that might not be immediately obvious? Are certain aspects of public transit service better provided at larger scales than some other aspects? If so, could enhanced coordination meaningfully improve transit service and coordination without formal consolidation? Is a
system of fewer, larger transit agencies better at serving disadvantaged travellers than one of more, smaller agencies? Such questions have vexed public officials for years, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area where studies of transit system coordination and/or consolidation stretch back to at least the 1980s.
Accordingly, this research will systematically examine the advantages and disadvantages of more, smaller versus fewer, larger transit agencies in large metropolitan areas. This general issue is not confined to the Bay Area or California. Accordingly, this research will examine where it has been raised and how it has been addressed in other large metropolitan areas around the U.S. and, to the extent possible, around the globe. We will examine both regional planning debates and studies of the issue, as well as academic research on the optimal size of transit agencies broadly and what economists refer to the economies and diseconomies of scope and scale in particular. We will also examine previous studies of effective transit coordination and consolidation with respect to capital planning, service delivery, fare policy,
public information, etc. For example, Tokyo hosts more daily transit riders than any metropolitan area in the world. To visitors, the vast, clean, and efficient networks of rail and bus service are a seamlessly integrated system where all rides can all be paid for with a popular local debit card. Yet behind the scenes this enormous transit system is comprised of three major rail transit operators and over a dozen smaller bus and rail operators, all of which operate in coordination with one another.
