The Property Rights Approach: An Uprising in the Economics of Urban Public Transport

This paper outlines and critically evaluates a property rights driven model devised by Lein, Moore and Reja (1997) to guide the economic organization of urban public transport in a regime of full privatization and deregulation. Some extensions to the model are also provided to address some matters underplayed in the model, in particular, the role of kerbside rights auction receipts. It is posited that these could, in principle, be recycled to fund a rolling programme of bus lanes, and thus stimulate a virtuous cycle of increasing ridership as a direct consequence of improved trip times and reliability.