Public Transport as a Common Pool Resource

Few public transport debates come to terms with the questions of what constitutes public transport, of what is it for, and exactly how it differs from private transport, individual transport, and collective transport. For some engaged in these debates, public transport is supported because of its contribution to net social welfare or to welfare of segments of society; public transport is therefore held as being in the public interest. Although this proposition is most certainly true as a generalisation, it reduces the understanding of public transport to essentially an expression of social values and suffers from being considered as purely subjective when tackling questions such as when and where public transport is to be preferred over its alternatives. Classical economics has traditionally explained the role of public transport as being necessary because free markets cannot be efficient and effective in providing a transport system. Public transport is necessarily provided by stat...