Graduation Semester and Year

2017

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Planning and Public Policy

Department

Urban and Public Affairs

First Advisor

Ardeshir Anjomani

Abstract

The network effect is the postulation that the utility of a product to a consumer increases as its consumption increases (Clement, 2004). If a parallel is drawn in transit service usage, the utility for transit services will increase to users as transit ridership increases. Different public transit providers within a metropolitan region can expand their area of transit services which would improve the utilization of their services through collaboration of transit services with other public transit providers within their service regions. Does such added utilization result in the increase of productive or technical efficiency levels for participating public transit providers? The answer is the focus of this study, which is the empirical comparative analysis of the productive efficiency measurements of public transit providers who collaboratively provide regional transit services against non-collaborative ones. These transit agencies serve as proxies for measuring the relationship between collaborative transit services and productive transit efficiency. It verifies that the transit providers participating in coordinated transit services with other transit providers in their service region are different than those that operate alone judging from a key performance indicator (KPI) – passenger trips per revenue hour. In doing that, an explanatory cross sectional study was conducted using data from Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) transit data clearinghouse called National Transit Database (NTD) and the United States Census Bureau. The study examined the factors contributing to the improvement of transit productive efficiency levels in US metropolitan areas. This empirical verification was designed to show how the KPI of efficiency could be improved through collaborative services. The result from this effort has shown that there is correlation between collaborativeness of transit services and productive or technical transit efficiency.

Keywords

Network effect, Key performance indicators, Productive or technical efficiency, Coordinated collaborative services, Explanatory cross sectional study

Disciplines

Public Affairs | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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