Impact of regulation on the performances of long-distance transport services: A comparison of the different approaches in Sweden and Norway

Regulations in Scheduled Intercity Coach Transport Sector in Turkey

“…In fact, a similar condition occured in some other countries. Collaborations between companies had become more prevalent in the Norwegian market, whereas consolidation was much more prevalent due to the cost advantages in British and Swedish markets (White & Robbins, 2012;Leiren & Fearnley, 2008;Alexandersson et al, 2010;Aarhaug & Fearnley, 2016).…”

“…The National Competition Authority of Sweden was not very fond of collaborations. However, the government of Norway supported collaborations due to increased intermodal competition and efficiency despite the opposition of the National Competition Authority (Alexandersson et al, 2010;Aarhaug & Fearnley, 2016).…”

“…Collaborations have a series of clear advantages such asthe integration of services, marketing, greater bargaining power in the transactions with tourism agencies or employee education (Alexandersson et al, 2010 …”

“…However, the number of scholarly works has been currently increasing. Robbins and White (1986), and White and Robbins (2012) focused on the British market; Fearnley (2007, 2008), and Aarhaug and Fearnley (2016) focused on the Norwegian market; Taylor and Ciechanski (2008) analyzed the Polish market; Gleave (2009) and Van de Velde (2013) evaluated the European market in general; Alexandersson et al (2010) compared Swedish and Norwegian markets; Walter et al (2011) focused on the German market; Beria et al (2013Beria et al ( , 2014 studied the Italian market; and Augustin et al (2014) conducted a comparative study on German and US markets. These studies revealed that the impacts of market liberalization and regulations differed across countries, and while market liberalization has generally resulted in the expansion of the market, the number of companies in the market remained unchanged, leading to a consolidation of the market contrary to the intended result.…”

Long-Distance Bus Services in Europe

“…Studies also showed that public transport usage has, on the whole, increased on the corridors with train/coach competition. In total, ridership has more than doubled between 2002 and 2007, while productivity has reached levels significantly higher than in neighbouring Sweden, that has also deregulated its market but with less possibility for co-operation between operators (Alexandersson et al 2009). …”