Consequences and Causes of Public Ownership of Urban Transit Facilities

The reasons for the shift from private to public ownership of urban transit facilities are the subject of the paper. The regulation theory suggests that this shift is due to the increasing severity of regulation, while the declining-market and externalities hypotheses suggest that increases in automobile ownership are the reason for reduced profits and public ownership. Regression results indicate that profit margins of privately owned systems are higher when regulation is by a state rather than a local agency. Changes in profit margins over time are found to be directly related to increases in automobile ownership.