Is flat fare fair? Equity impact of fare scheme change

Is flat fare fair? Equity impact of fare scheme change

Rubensson, Isak (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Susilo, Yusak (BOKU-University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences)
Cats, O. (TU Delft Transport and Planning; KTH Royal Institute of Technology)

2020-06-01

When Public Transport Administrations propose changes in fare schemes or increased fares, they are often met with concerns regarding the proposed fare schemes fairness. Implicit in these concerns is an understanding of relations governing land use and public transport, impacting equity. In this paper, we use socio-economic statistics of census areas in conjunction with public transport travel data from a transport forecast model to assess the geographical and distributional fairness of alternative fare schemes: flat, zone-based and distance-based. We discuss our result in relation to both the scientific literature and the known “truths” in the public debate. The method is applied to the Case study of Stockholm public transport. We find that high-income travelers benefit from all three fare schemes considered but, in contrast to much of the literature, least by flat fares. A strong distance-dependent fare could be horizontally equitable but has poor vertical equity.

Distribution
Equity
Fare-schemes
Gini index
Public transport
Transport demand models

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:bf57610e-5bb6-4d9f-8e57-b4939ef4687f

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2020.03.013

2020-09-26

0967-070X

Transport Policy, 91, 48-58

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2020 Isak Rubensson, Yusak Susilo, O. Cats