Ricerc@Sapienza

In this paper, we build a proxy cost model for tramway services. we estimate separately: (i) transport services production costs; (ii) infrastructure costs; (iii) maintenance costs; (iv) administrative and general costs and (v) the cost of capital. we apply the proposed methodology to estimate the standard cost of italian tramway services. detailed data about costs, technical and environmental characteristics were collected by means of questionnaires sent to italian companies providing 100% of tramway services in 2012.

We develop a hybrid cost model for the determination of unit standard costs in the Italian local public bus transport sector. Detailed economic and transport data have been collected from companies producing more than 500 million of bus-kilometers in Italy observed in 2011. We draw upon the Bottom-Up approach for the estimation of the cost of the driving personnel and the economic cost of the rolling stock which usually cover more than 50% of the total economic cost.

In this paper, we measure the standard cost of light metro (LM) and heavy metro (HM) Italian services based on the cost model provided by Avenali et al., (2018). The cost model takes into account technological characteristics that may drive cost differentials, such as the degree of automatism of the rolling stock, wheels technology and hourly peak capacity. Specifically, we focus on three case studies: (i) not automatic railway steel technology with heavy capacity; (ii) not automatic railway steel technology with light capacity; (iii) automatic rubber-tyred technology with light capacity.

Local public transport (LPT) operators typically operate at a deficit and require economic compensation from public authorities. In some countries, public funds are provided both at a national (centralized) level and at a regional (decentralized) level. Thus, a proper distribution of such funds should be based on the costs of an efficient operator and a methodology that does not build differential inefficiencies across regions.