Brussels Studies La revue scientifique électronique pour les recherches sur Bruxelles / Het elektronisch wetenschappelijk tijdschrift voor onderzoek over Brussel / The e-journal for academic research on Brussels 2016 Collection générale | 2007 The direct cost and geography of Brussels mass transport’s operating delays Coût direct et géographie des ralentissements subis par les transports publics bruxellois Rechtstreekse kost en ruimtelijke verdeling van de vertragingen in het Brussels openbaar vervoer Frédéric Dobruszkes and Yves Fourneau Translator: Gabrielle Leyden Publisher Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles Electronic version URL: http://brussels.revues.org/423 ISSN: 2031-0293 Electronic reference Frédéric Dobruszkes and Yves Fourneau, « The direct cost and geography of Brussels mass transport’s operating delays », Brussels Studies [Online], General collection, document 7, Online since 24 May 2007, connection on 12 January 2017. URL : http://brussels.revues.org/423 The text is a facsimile of the print edition. Licence CC BY the e-journal for academic research on Brussels www.brusselsstudies.be Issue 7, 24 May 2007 Frédéric Dobruszkes Yves Fourneau The direct cost and geography of Brussels mass transport’s operating delays A b s t r a c t Automobile traffic causes a decrease in the sur- Introduction face mass transport’s effectiveness in Brussels as in other cities. In economic terms, this corres- Whereas the commercial speeds of mass transport in many cities are reduced be- ponds to lower returns and productivity for the operator. This article documents economically– in cause of automobile traffic, this seems to interest economists and geographers little. terms of direct costs – and geographically how From a geographic point of view, mapping the inefficiency of mass transport can road traffic slows down the region’s urban buses and trams. Such a computation appears to be show the places where action is urgently needed while setting the local authorities unprecedented, although it offers a different way before their responsibilities. In economic terms, traffic jams create direct monetary to state the problem of financing public transport costs for mass transport to the extent that the commercial speeds, frequency of and of analysing the conflict between automobile transport and mass transport. service, and number of vehicles are directly related to them. If the service frequency The aggregation of spatially and temporally fine is kept constant, a slower operating speed forces the operator to put more vehicles data enables the authors to conclude that at least on the road, which increases both the investment costs (by increasing the number 18% of the supply’s production cost serves only to offset these running delays. Moreover, a detai- of vehicles and depot requirements) and operating costs, given the costs inherent in led map of service along the various routes that the mileage covered by the vehicles and the cost of labour, which accounts for a allows for the frequencies of the vehicles’ runs reveals the trouble spots where urgent action is large share of the operating budget. In a comparative study of the costs and pro- necessary and shows that creating exclusive ductivity of mass transport networks across Europe, Wunsch (1996) effectively con- rights of way is not enough. firmed the favourable impacts of the commercial speed on these two variables 1. Yet whereas the phenomenon of congestion is very widespread, we have found no trace of research that circumscribes and quantifies exhaustively the costs that it incurs for the municipality. This is all the more amazing in that it is a real cost, and thus one that can be set objectively, without having to go through a myriad of valua- tions that are subject to debate. In addition, there are a great many studies of mass transport network productivity and the costs of road congestion. The latter focus Frederic Dobruszkes is a geographer and on the costs or additional costs of congestion as external costs, especially when it researcher in transport geography at Brussels comes to the value of lost time, and, moreover, usually for motorists or lorry drivers Free University (ULB). Yves Fourneau is an economist and in charge of designing the only. transport supply for the Brussels transport operator STIB/MIVB. The authors are expressing their own opinions, completely separate from their professional activities. The research and drafting of this article were done before Yves Fourneau was hired by the Brussels interborough transport 1 With an elasticity between the cost per vehicle-km and speed of -0.392 for buses and -0.121 operator STIB/MIVB. for trams. Contacts: F. Dobruszkes, +32 (0)2/650 50 72 – [email protected] Y. Fourneau, +32 (0)2/515 51 31 – [email protected] Michel Hubert (ed. in chief), +32 (0)2/211 78 53 and +32 (0)485/41 67 64 [email protected] F. Dobruszkes, Y. Fourneau, The direct cost and geography of Brussels mass... 2 For example, Beuthe and co-workers (2002) studied the external costs of goods carriage on Belgium’s intercity networks and calculated the cost of congestion for transport operators (costs linked to the lorries and to the value of the merchandise) based on lost time. They estimated these costs for passenger cars and small commercial vehicles, but produced nothing for mass transport. Levinson and Gillen (1998), in studying the internal and external costs of intercity highway transportation, included in the cost of congestion only the value of the time lost by travellers in pas- senger cars. Prud’homme (1999) and Prud’homme and Sun (2000), in studying the economic cost of congestion in Paris and on the Paris beltway, respectively, did not take the trip time differential between unused or fluid roads and congested situa- tions as their starting points, but calculated the deviation from optimal congestion2 using a method that, although admittedly original, allowed as well only for the case of the motorists who were directly concerned. When it comes to marginal external costs, Mayeres et al. (1996) and Boniver and Thiry (1994) extended their computa- tions to mass transport ridership and lorries, but also limited their calculations to the value of time lost. Finally, the “Boiteux 2 Report” (Commissariat Général du Plan, 2001) contains a chapter on “urban congestion and [its] interactions with passenger car traffic and other road users”. However, the report does no more than point out the lack and age of the data describing and quantifying the interactions between passenger cars and mass transport. The corollary is to call for studies in this area to be carried out. Despite the varied literature that we consulted, there does not seem to exist any quantification of the direct costs of the reduced efficiency of mass transport due to road traffic in Brussels. Now, while one may think that this cost is marginal with regard to the internal and external costs generated by road traffic, one can on the contrary suppose that it is significant if it is compared with the mass transport op- erators’ outlays, which are largely financed by the community or municipality. What is more, we must stress the fact that this additional cost for mass transport budgets is a direct cost, one that is actually spent by the public authorities, and not an indi- rect cost obtained by setting a monetary value to a type of bother that, while both- ersome, does not necessarily correspond to a real monetary outlay (“cost” of noise, vibrations, ugliness, and so on). This article tries to plug some of these gaps using the example of Brussels. The aims are to approximate the direct cost of the lower speeds for the operator of the Brussels-Capital Region’s transport network and to map these poor performances for analytical purposes (to understand them) as well as for practical purposes (to determine the places where action should be taken first). The article is structured as follows: It first gives a brief overview of the context plaguing Brussels’ mass trans- port and justifies the fact that we shall focus on the surface network. Next comes a precise quantitative inventory of the running delays that this mass transport network sustains, drawn up using time losses and their consequences in terms of the size of the rolling stock fleet that is required. The direct cost is then estimated from these data. Finally, the segments characterised by reduced commercial speeds are mapped and their spatial distribution discussed. 2 Defined as congestion that maximises the surplus to the extent that, according to the au- thors, roads are not built to be empty of vehicles. Brussels Studies, the e-journal for academic research on Brussels, Issue 7, 24 May 2007 w w w . b r u s s e l s s t u d i e s . b e F. Dobruszkes, Y. Fourneau, The direct cost and geography of Brussels mass... 3 Given the magnitude of this work and the availability of data, this article is neverthe- less limited to the trams and buses of the Brussels Interborough Transport Com- pany (STIB/MIVB), that is to say, the network of the city’s major urban operator3, while the map concerns the tram lines only. 1. The Brussels Context 1.1. Massive use of the passenger car Brussels’ surface mass transport lines – buses and trams – are generally rather inef- ficient, especially due to automobile traffic, even though the latter is not the only cause of the buses and trams’ poor commercial speeds 4. Automobile traffic in Brussels is effectively very heavy, especially, but not only, during rush hours. This is because it is a rather monocentric city that suffers from a wide peri-urban settlement ring and an employment pool that extends much farther than the morphological agglomeration (Vandermotten et al., 1999) but concentrates a large share of its jobs and shops in its central areas while at the same time offering motorists comfortable infrastructure (urban motorways and a large number of parking spaces in the streets and under office buildings).