A Comparative Analysis On The Transportation Costs Between Public Tranportation And Cars

How to prioritize the development of public transport and to restrain the use of cars becomes a vital issue for decision-makers in sectors concerning transportation. This paper, through a comparative analysis between the transportation costs by public transport and by cars, intends to give a full account of analysis and quantitative calculation from the perspective of economics. It analyzes the impact the transportation costs have on the development of public transport and cars, with the purpose of laying a theoretical foundation for the scientific and fair use of transportation resources in cities and for the sustainable development of urban transportation.This paper first puts forwards the definition of transportation costs, classifies the transportation costs of public transport and cars. Based on this classification, this paper builds up a calculation model. It takes the city of Nanjing as an example. Then, it quantifies and monetizes the transportation costs by buses, subways and cars, and draws a table summarizing the transportation costs in Nanjing. The comparative study between the costs of public transport and cars is done both horizontally and vertically. Through comparative analysis, it points out that the reasons for the imbalance between supply and demand of public transport and cars.In order to guide people to choose the proper means of transportation, optimize the transportation structure, this paper illustrates the problem of the internalization of external transportation costs. Then it illustrates the policy of the priority of public transportation, the necessity of implementing public transportation and some policies and measures to ensure the priority of public transportation. Finally, based on the analysis of calculation of costs, it discusses the development countermeasure on urban transportation and cars.