The paper shows how variations in systems of property rights explain diverse experiences of urban jitneys and buses. Scheduled bus service entails route specific investments and cultivation of a market. If these investments can be expropriated by interloping jitneys, scheduled service will be dissolved. Property rights in curbspace determine whether scheduled service will be preserved, and whether jitney services will co-exist. We analyze the dynamics of thick and thin transit markets, with and without curb rights. We develop a governance system of curb rights that would let bus operators appropriate their own investments in scheduled service, yet would avoid monopoly by letting jitneys and competing scheduled services operate along the same route. A property rights system dispenses with government ownership, franchise contracting, and regulation.

The experience of British bus deregulation has resulted in less on-the-road competition than anticipated, and a high degree of industry concentration. We argue that the specific form of deregulation in Britain has created a property rights problem in the cultivation of passenger congregations at the curb. The result has been schedule jockeying and route swamping. From a property rights perspective, the disappointing results can be seen as a commons problem. A nuanced approach to property right at bus stops, permitting scheduled service to appropriate its investment in cultivating passenger congregations, and allowing freewheeling jitneys to compete on the route, could bring the benefits that many had expected from deregulation.

I arrived here at the UC Transportation Center just nine months ago. A former lawyer and aspiring writer, I had only a layman's knowledge of transportation systems, mostly based on my personal experiences. 

Growing up in Hilo, Hawaii, I thought traffic jams meant having to circle the parking lot twice to find a space. No one worried about ozone or took cars in for smog checks. Every desirable destination - shopping malls, movie theaters, beaches, even downtown - was within a few minutes' drive.