This report describes the application of two methods of crew-costing in eight bus companies with widely varying methods of scheduling and payment. Both costing methods take account of the effect of peakiness of service on crew costs. One method was developed by Arthur Andersen and company and determines an average crew cost per bus-hour in peak and off-peak periods separately. The other was developed by London transport and estimates the numbers of duties of different types required to crew a given schedule. It was found that, while neither method offered an improvement over average costing in companies with a fully-consolidated pay agreement, or where there was no appreciable variation in peaking between routes or between schedules, the methods could offer a useful improvement in accuracy over average costing in many situations. There seemed to be little to choose between the two methods, in general, and both were able to predict the costs of new schedules to within one or two percent, while average costing gave errors of typically two to four times this magnitude, and even larger errors were obtained where the ratio of peak to off-peak service was changed considerably in the new schedule. Similarly, the methods were likely to attribute costs to individual routes in a more realistic way than average costing, the difference in cost allocation amounting to as much as 12 per cent of the total variable costs per route. The report also gives a step-by-step description of the procedure for applying the two methods. (Author/publisher)
Abstract