Delineating regions for transit assistance allocation: a geographical approach

Governmental assistance to transport operators, which is increasing simultaneously with a decrease in patronage, is aimed at ensuring a regular service to all populated areas regardless of economic rationale. A purely geographical approach has been proposed to define priority transport subsidy allocation regions. A priority allocation index based on fundamental principles such as rank-size distribution, gravitation, and spatial equity has been used as a national experiment in Israel. This involves cluster analysis to generate several alternative allocation regions from which planners may select an appropriate policy. This paper reviews the experiment and discusses the implications of the results for allocation of transport subsidies.