METHODOLOGY
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.
