The Political Economy of Urban Transport System Choice

Jan Brueckner and Harris Selod ()

No 4682, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper analyzes the political economy of transport-system choice, with the goal of gaining an understanding of the forces involved in this important urban public policy decision. Transport systems pose a continuous trade-off between time and money cost, so that a city can choose a fast system with a high money cost per mile or a slower, cheaper system. The paper compares the socially optimal transport system to the one chosen under the voting process, focusing on both homogeneous and heterogeneous cities, while considering different landownership arrangements. The analysis identifies a bias toward underinvestment in transport quality in heterogeneous cities.

Keywords: Over-investment in transport quality; Income heterogeneity; Multiple transport systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4682 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The political economy of urban transport-system choice (2006)
Working Paper: The political economy of urban transport-system choice (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4682

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4682

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().