R49 - Transportation Economics: OtherReturn

This paper investigates the determinants of airlines' route presence in the single EU aviation market by estimating two probit models - one for full-service airlines and one for low-cost carriers - which specify the presence (or absence) of an airline's service on the route as a function of its airport presence measures, the competition it faces from other airlines, and general route characteristics. The results point to the existence of dominant-firm advantages, domestic-firm privileges, and substantial airport-facilities-related barriers to entry in the EU airline industry. They further indicate that served routes are characterized by relative time efficiency of air travel (in comparison to car travel), large endpoint cities' populations as well as per capita GDPs; and that competitive effects between full-service and low-cost airlines are asymmetric.

The paper identifies, formulates and resolves several problems arising from dealing with the economic and social pillars of sustainable public transport. In the first part of the paper three pillars of sustainable transport are presented. The second part studies harmonization problems of economic, spatial and time accessibility of public transport and illustrates them by the Czech situation. The third part studies the cost-revenue-subsidy relation, emphasizes the right choice of fares and suggests a harmonization between the prices of the ticket for individual trip and the monthly one. The fourth part shows several important measures for getting the economic and social acceptability of public transport service, namely optimal choice of rolling stock structure, routes and frequencies, vehicle and crew scheduling.