The Analysis of Determinants of Public Transport Demand in the City of Perugia

There are several ways to promote public transport demand. Perugia achieved a leading national position in the last decade by a tariff reform and by developing an integrated local public transport network that includes lifts and escalators. Since 1996, the number of passengers has continually increased, with an increase in demand of 41%. This paper has two objectives. The first is to identify the factors underlying the performance of local public transport in Perugia. To this end, an aggregate demand function is estimated for bus and urban railway trips in order to present evidence on demand elasticities with respect to the main attributes of local public transport and to the socio-demographic characteristics of its users. The second aim is to evaluate the impact of the tariff reform and the consequences of the introduction of cards and multi-ride tickets by estimating a system of ownand cross-price elasticities for different ticket types.