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Trans. Planning Journal
| Title | Understanding the Development of Highway and City Bus Services at Rural or Low Density Areas in Taiwan and Finding Improvement Strategies |
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| Author | Mu-Han Wang, Tsan-Yu Chang, Shyh-Long Chang and Li-Chin Huang |
| Summary | The history of the public highway and city bus operations in Taiwan is over 100 years long. As time goes by, public highway bus operations have changed. Over the past 20 years, the government has changed their policy on public highway and city bus operations by opening markets in order to allow private operators to take over services in most regions. At the same time, the concept of monopoly operations in a single market region has been changed. The public notice that it becomes an issue if there is no subsidy guarantee no operators would like to continue their services at most rural areas. However, as public transportation ridership continues to decline, some question the effectiveness of subsidies and request central government to examine policy. People believe that highway and city bus services are like water or electricity services (so called public utilities). Profit is not the only motivation for public utility operators and most of them are publicly owned. However, this is not the case for most of the highway and city bus operators who need to survive and have no shame in profit making. There is no reason to ask those private operators to take responsibility for the government. Understanding such controversial issues and facing challenges of the market environment, this paper aims to reestablish the role of the government and propose a new concept to restructure markets. After market restructuring, government and private operators should have clearer roles and responsibility for different sectors. |
| Vol. | 41 |
| No. | 2 |
| Page | 165 |
| Year | 2012 |
| Month | 6 |
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