Note 1. Full sample of all directly operated (123) and competitively tendered (75) services in National Transit Database in metropolitan areas with more than one million population (total number of public transport agencies=160). These agencies represent 87.4 percent of all US public transport bus ridership

Note 2. Data obtained from the Metropolitan Council in Minneapolis-St. Paul for competitively tendered services not reported to the National Transit Database. Competitive privately provided services assumed to have 1.15 vehicle hours and miles per each service hour and mile.

Note 3: Administrative costs allocated to non-competitive and competitive services based vehicle miles and vehicle hours using weighting from Note #5, below.

Note 4. Some competitively tendered services include vehicle capital costs. In contrast, no capital costs are included in direct operating costs and some maintenance costs are capitalized (resulting in an understatment of direct operating costs. A 10 percent cost reduction is applied to competitive costs where vehicle capital costs are included. Vehicle capital costs excluded in Denver based upon data in 1995 Management Report. Without this adjustment the metropolitan area average saving would be 28.6 percent (instead of 30.6 percent) and the national unweighted average saving would be 34.4 percent instead of (instead of 35.2 percent. The 10 percent adjustment is considered conservative.

Note 5: Composite cost comparison uses a weighting of cost per vehicle hour and cost per vehicle mile calculated at the individual transit agency level using the ratio of vehicle operations v. vehicle maintenance costs.

Note 6: Additional data obtained from city of Indianapolis.

Competitively tendered services in Houston, Milwaukee, Sacramento and Seattle are principally peak-hour express services, which tend to have higher costs per vehicle hour than other services.

Houston Metro competitively tendered a complete operating division in 1996 (150 buses). Agency staff estimates the savings at more than 35 percent.

The Seattle competitively tendered peak-hour express services (Snohomish County) have been retendered (1997), resulting in a cost per hour reduction of 19 percent from the previous contract, which would increase the cost differential between competitive and non-competitive costs.