Workshop 5 report: Bridging the benefit / funding gap

This paper synthesizes evidence from Workshop 5 ‘Bridging the benefit/funding gap’ of the 15th International Conference on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport. This workshop focused on identifying and categorizing the benefits and costs of public transport service provision, with a particular focus on external benefits and costs. Examples were drawn from a range of service settings, with network effects and social inclusion each seen as potentially very important public transport service benefits. This led to discussion of proposals for funding public transport services and infrastructure in ways that better align benefit/cost incidence with funding flows. Road pricing and value capture associated with public transport infrastructure and services were seen as major funding opportunities. A major Workshop conclusion was that, taking account of the potential scale of public transport beneficial externalities and the value of (user) social inclusion benefits from public transport services, cost recovery rates for urban PT of well under 50% should commonly be expected, for welfare maximization, with rural fare cost-recovery rates lower than urban.