This work concentrates on seven major Norwegian cities: Oslo, Drammen, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Bergen, Trondheim, and Tromso, in the period 1986-1999. The authors describe and compare trends for subsidies, costs, fare levels, supply (vehicle kilometres per capita) and demand (patronage measured in trips per capita) for the seven cities. These findings are presented by way of indices, using 1986 as the base year. A number of potential explanatory factors for the various trends are discussed. This part of the analysis is semi-qualitative and presents a number of questions for further research. In this paper the findings of this part of the analysis are only briefly described. In order to describe passenger behaviour an aggregated demand model has been built, which relates the number of trips per capita to various explanatory variables. This is a constant elasticity regression model. In addition to providing new information about demand elasticities, the model has also been used to separate the effects of the changes in fare and service levels on demand. The social welfare balance sheet compares public savings obtained from subsidy reductions with the costs that poorer service levels and higher fares incur on passengers and other areas of society. This is a relatively crude measure for the economic impact of the changes in the public transport sector. The approach is not a traditional cost-benefit analysis. Rather, it is an annual summary of the impacts of the changes relative to the base year 1986. On the benefits side there are the reductions in subsidies, which represent a saving. These savings are offset by costs that accrue to passengers and others, who experience poorer service levels, fare increases, traffic congestion and pollution.
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