An evidence-based analysis for evaluating Japan’s public transport policy to give subsidized omnibus operators incentives to improve their balance

Abstract

Omnibus operators in Japan especially in rural areas keep their services mainly by public subsidies. Recently, The Government of Japan has taken the policy to impose stronger incentive for these subsidized operators’ balance improvement to decrease the deficit and to cut public spending. The paper has evaluated the policy by analyzing the past 10 years’ data of certain scaled operators from 2007 to 2016. The analysis has showed that omnibus businesses have been strongly affected by regional factors. Thus, the incentive policy cannot create enough change of operators’ motivation or ability to improve their revenue. They may be expected just to decrease their omnibus services in rural areas. Therefore, the policy may not have the incentive to improve Japan’s omnibus service quality, just have the risk to deteriorate the sustainability in rural areas.