Urban public transport (UPT) is considered as an indispensable element of life support in modern cities of medium and large dimension. This is probably the main reason why the sector is so politically sensitive and has been across its history a privileged area for State intervention through both regulation and subsidising.
In the transportation sector, like in other sectors, most markets are rather far from perfect due to the interference of external effects and other market failure factors. These factors, together with the fact that infrastructure costs, often supported bv the State, represent a high portion of the total cost of providing a service, and the difficulty of applying marginal cost principles, have justified the imposition of taxes and charges.

Sustainable growth respecting the environment is one of the main objectives of the Common Transport Policy (CTP). To internalise pollution and congestion costs, considered as externalities, all transport users should pay the full or real costs of the transport services they use, which are to be charged at the real marginal social cost. If this would be possible an advantage of public transport over private transport would possibly result and be reflected in the relative price of these modes. So far, and since the private car (main competing mode) is not priced at marginal social costs, the alternative solution has been to use subsidies as an effective and socially approved way to maintain the price difference between competing modes. This is the well-known "second best" argument.

FISCUS APROACH

The last 10 years have witnessed a strong movement of change in UPT all over Europe with two main common goals - increasing productive efficiency of urban transport and reducing public expenditure in the sector by introducing new ways to involve private finance and different strategies to achieve it.

Nowadays it is consensual that an urban transport policy should have as main strategic goal the coverage of costs in the short and long run and the stimulation of modal shift towards public transport. Despite this knowledge most pricing policies have failed to succeed due to an underestimation of the constraints of the implementation process that are twofold: political acceptability of the measures to be implemented, and misevaluation of the main costs inherent to its implementation such as transaction and information costs.

FISCUS will directly address these issues by evaluating the internal and external costs of UPT and searching for new financing schemes of urban mobility. This project will analyse existing cost allocation methodologies and financial schemes as well as planned and/or new ones, that will be conceived in the project as a response to observed gaps and weaknesses, addressing two main issues:

    The evaluation of real transport costs, internal and external with the objective of enabling cost comparisons between public transport and private car over the same journey;

    The financing of urban mobility here understood as corresponding to who pays, directly or indirectly the provision of infrastructure and services in this area, but also to who bears its positive or negative consequences without being directly involved.

TIS.pt - Transportes, Inovação e Sistemas S.A.