Transport for Suburbia

9

Towards a General Theory of Public Transport Network Planning

 

The Way to Cork

A few years ago, an Australian newspaper published a cartoon satirizing economists. A stereotypically pointy-headed male was staring in rage at some example of successful government enterprise, shouting: ‘It might work in practice, but it doesn’t work in theory!’

Urban public transport seems a bit like that cartoon. The success stories reviewed in this book rely on measures condemned by the conventional wisdoms of neo-liberal transport economics: high transfer rates, central planning, government monopolies, cross-subsidization – and congestion instead of road pricing. Conversely, public transport systems that follow the conventional wisdoms have failed, from England ...