By
the end of the 2010’s, city officials in several American cities were
rethinking bus service in a fundamental way; the passenger-fare revenue model
was being questioned, and in some cases replaced with a model that fit better
with serving poor people and changed local business environments. Yet the
downside effects on the bus companies of trends, especially regarding
ridership, may have been the result of internal organizational factors immune
to a change in the revenue model. I contend that city officials and the
managers of bus companies should resist the temptation to view a new model as a
cure precisely because some problems, internal to the companies, could go on
and silently undermine analysis of the new model such that it could erroneously
be discontinued. To be sure, being willing to question a longstanding model is
a mark of managerial strength. Indeed, it is precisely the managers of bus
companies and regional authorities who are mired in longstanding assumptions
who would tend to have the most difficulty in dealing with troublesome internal
problems.
The full essay is at "Strong and Weak Management: Bus Companies."
