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Cities are indispensable for economic development, although urban agglomerations can fail to deliver their potential due to congestion. Metros are key to achieving the benefits of urban densities without the costs of congestion, by means of providing unparalleled fast and high-capacity transportation in densely populated areas. These urban rail systems require large one-off initial investments but also substantial operational costs, in order to provide the regular day-to-day rail service and maintain the metro's fixed and mobile assets in good condition, such as the rail tracks and the trains, respectively. The aim of this thesis is to better understand what determines these operational costs. The analysis is based on a panel of more than 20 large and medium-sized urban rail systems across the world during the period 2005 to 2014. The research is based on the econometric estimation of cost functions for the aggregate operating costs but also for some of its constituents like train service, station service and rolling stock maintenance costs. Likewise, different outputs are considered to evaluate the cost efficiency of the metros, such as car kilometres, passenger journeys and train hours among others. The analysis quantifies the effects of economies of scale and economies of density in metro operations, which can vary significantly between different divisions of the metro operations leading to substantial policy implications. Moreover, the effect of wages, and how this is linked to labour productivity, is also examined. The dissertation also estimates the corresponding cost elasticities for other cost factors such as labour outsourcing, subsidies and network characteristics. Lastly, the research describes the effect of age on urban rail operating costs and also outlines the background time trends on how the metro operating costs could evolve in the future. Open Access

Origin-destination demand, trip patterns, pricing and transport networks alone cannot explain passenger demand for public transport modes. Other factors of convenience and service quality play a key role in influencing demand and mode choice but they are often more complex and harder to define, measure and value. This paper argues that the good measurement of public transport convenience and service quality is a pre-requisite to its valuation and ensuring more optimal policy and management actions to minimise passengers' generalised time. The paper focusses necessarily on the urban public transport operator and its measurement of service quality. We review the practical experience gained from over 20 years of international benchmarking with more than 50 metro, bus and suburban rail operators in large cities around the world. Specifically, we review the current standards and practices from the urban railway industry in measuring service quality and provide examples of how such performance in metro operations varies globally. It is demonstrated that current practice in many cities remains too operationally based, despite there being an opportunity for much more customer focused measures of service quality using the greatly increased data availability from new technologies. The experience of the UK railway industry in valuing convenience and service quality is discussed. Here, a common framework for demand forecasting has been developed combining service quality and convenience measures with other service attributes to effectively measure the 'attractiveness' of the service to customers. The paper concludes by considering the implications and opportunities for public transport operators, authorities and regulators worldwide in better measuring, valuing and managing public transport convenience in order to better meet mobility needs.