Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit [Paperback]

Daniel Klein (Author), Adrain T. Moore (Author), Binyam Reja (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0815749392 | ISBN-13: 978-0815749394 | Publication Date: January 1, 1997

Transit services in the United States are in trouble. Ridership has dwindled, productivity has declined, and operating deficits have widened. The traditional approaches to running transit systems--government planning or operation of bus and rail services, government subsidization of private operations, heavy regulation of all transit modes--have failed, and there is little hope of their ever succeeding under current practices. But public transportation cannot simply be abandoned. Can it, then, be made more self-supporting and efficient? The authors of this book say it's time to rethink the fundamental structure of transit policy. The book focuses on street-based transit--buses, shuttles, and jitneys. (While street-based transit in the U.S. today usually means bus service, in other times and places streets have also been served by smaller vehicles called jitneys that follow a route but not a schedule.) The authors examine a variety of transit services: jitney services from America's past, illegal jitneys today, airport shuttle van services, bus deregulation in Great Britain, and jitney services in less developed countries. The authors propose that urban transit be brought into the fold of market activity by establishing property rights not only in vehicles, but also in curb zones and transit stops. Market competition and entrepreneurship would depend on a foundation of what they call " curb rights." By creating exclusive and transferable curb rights (to bus stops and other pickup points) leased by auction, the authors contend that American cities can have the best of both kinds of markets--scheduled (and unsubsidized) bus service and unscheduled but faster and more flexiblejitneys. They maintain that a carefully planned transit system based on property rights would rid the transit market of inefficient government production and overregulation. It would also avoid the problems of a lawless market--cutthroat competition, schedule jockeying, and even curbside conflict among rival operators. Entrepreneurs would be able to introduce ever better service, revise schedules and route structures, establish connections among transit providers, and use new pricing strategies. And travelers would find public transit more attractive than they do now. Once the system of curb rights is sensibly implemented, the authors conclude, the market process will take over. Then the invisible hand can do in transit what it does so well in other parts of the economy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 162 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815749392
• ISBN-13: 978-0815749394
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #612,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Law > Business > Regulation

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book!, July 25, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit (Hardcover)

There would be no need to take a "survey on how customers felt before and after deregulation." The "survey" would be expressed by customers voluntarily using the service, i.e. whether they were willing to purchase rides on deregulated transit vehicles. If customers were satisfied, the transit company would prosper. If not, they would go out of business and another company could enter the market and provide satisfactory service. That is the only survey that counts! If that's too much Econ 101 speculation, then you just don't get it!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a way to better transit, January 3, 2007

By 

Brian White - See all my reviews

This review is from: Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit (Paperback)

The authors suggest a hybrid system of urban mass-transit consisting of both privately-owned, flexibly-scheduled & routed and public-owned, fixed scheduled & routed bus systems. In order to prevent the flexibly-scheduled system from parasitically skimming passengers from the fixed route system, the authors suggest the promotion of "curb rights" to separate the operations.

This would allow the predictably high-volume routes to be served by the high-volume, large bus & cost overhead municipal operation while allowing the service increases possible through the addition of smaller and possibly innovative operators.

Makes sense to me. While clearly advocating their position, the authors recognize and address the ligitimancy of the municipalities' concerns over service preservation. With sensible implentation, I'm sure it would work to improve urban transit which (it seems to me) currently consists of balancing the interest of car-driving taxpayers to limit transit subsidies and the interests of Municipal Transit Agency employee unions to maximize employee wages and benefits, with the transit customer well down on the list of concerns.

1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too much Economics 101 speculation, January 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit (Paperback)

"Curb Rights" tries to answer the problem of subsidized transit, but offers too much economic modeling, which would not necessarily work.

The book is founded on the theory of bus and jitney operators having rights to own the curb for bus stops. This brings about too much free market optimism, but very little assurance that public transit would actually be improved.

It's no surprise that free market public transit is advocated, one of the authors is from the Libertarian Party think tank, the Reason Foundation.

The authors also mention that in places where transit was deregulated, there was no survey on how riders actually felt about service before and after deregulation. So there is no guarantee about improvement.