Demand elastisities for local public transport in Norway

Local public transport in Norway is financed mainly by fares payed by the users, while the county authorities regulates fares and the level of service. Subsidies are modest, at average 25 percent. When ambitions for public transport are high and public resources limited it is important to assess the effect fare changes have on demand, as fares * demand determine 75% of the incomes. In this project we have studied a number of norwegian studies. Both before-after studies, pooled cross section-time series regression analysis on agregated data and discrete choice/travel survey based logit models is used to estimate elastisities in several studies. We have also refered to studies from abroad, published in journals and some extensive reports from Great Britain. At average for Norway we found an price elastiscity of -0.38 and a service elasticiy of 0.42.