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Affordability of Public Transport A Methodological Clarification

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  • Andrés Gómez-Lobo

Abstract

There has been a surge of interest recently on the relation between poverty and transport policies. When analysing the relation between poverty and transport, concern often centres on the affordability of public transport. In this paper we present two alternative definitions of affordability used in the transport literature and discuss their limitations. Any affordability measure covering only transport expenditure is bound to be a very partial view of household welfare. In addition, the required affordability benchmark to determine whether or not transport costs are high is arbitrary. Therefore, the approach that uses the absolute level of these affordability measures is meaningless. We also show in this paper that the change in the affordability measures, as opposed to its absolute level, can be given a more rigorous interpretation in terms of traditional welfare economics. In spite of this last result, we argue that to analyse whether transport subsidies are meeting their social or distributional objectives it may be more fruitful to use traditional income distributional tools such as the relative benefit curve and its associated Gini coefficient. © 2011 LSE and the University of Bath

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  • Andrés Gómez-Lobo, 2011. "Affordability of Public Transport A Methodological Clarification," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 45(3), pages 437-456, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpe:jtecpo:v:45:y:2011:i:3:p:437-456
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    1. Gandelman, Néstor & Serebrisky, Tomás & Suárez-Alemán, Ancor, 2019. "Household spending on transport in Latin America and the Caribbean: A dimension of transport affordability in the region," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Murad Mohammed & Sanjaya Senadheera, 2022. "Public Transport Affordability Evaluation for Addis Ababa City," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-18, June.
    3. Zhao, Pengjun & Zhang, Yixue, 2019. "The effects of metro fare increase on transport equity: New evidence from Beijing," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 73-83.
    4. Dewita, Yulia & Yen, Barbara T.H. & Burke, Matthew, 2018. "The effect of transport cost on housing affordability: Experiences from the Bandung Metropolitan Area, Indonesia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 507-519.

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