Transport system optimization and pricing

Sammanfattning: How should the pricing principles prescribed by welfare economic theory be translated into operational pricing policy for different transport services? This question is considered for scheduled transport services in general, and for urban bus transport and cargo shipping in particular, for seaports and for highways. The second main question is: what would the financial result be in these cases of applying a pricing policy aimed at net social benefit mazimization? To answer this second question the tempting short-cut of assuming the whole supply-side as given, which is typical of the prevailing price theory, has to be resisted. In the present dissertation another approach is adopted. At first the conditions for efficiency in the production of transport services is investigated in a sytem context. Then it is possible to predict the financial result of optimal pricing. The predictions are disturbing: with the notable exception of urban roads, optimal pricing of the services provided by transport infrastructure as well as of public transport services would result in much larger financial deficits than tax payers would probably be prepared to sustain. The third main question is thus: what is the optimal departure from first-best pricing of transport services in the presence of a budget contrain? The current idea that second-best pricing is obtained by applying the value-of-service principle, i.e. price discrimination, is opposed, and a modern version of the cost-of-service principle is recommended.