Profit or utility maximizing? Strategy, tactics and the Municipal Tramways of York, c. 1918-1935

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to contest Mees’ (2010) theory that publicly owned public transport operators normatively target their resources to maximize service rather than profit. Mees argues that neoliberal governments in the Anglosphere were mistaken to privatize their undertakings, yet it is shown that the British ethos of municipal trading meant that municipalities always saw public transport as more of a business than a service. Design/methodology/approach The author uses an archival microstudy of the municipal tramway undertaking of the English city of York, using municipal archives triangulated with local and industry media sources. Findings The paper proposes the refination of the Mees spectrum of public transport from public to private (2010, pp. 73-75) to note that public undertakings can be operated within a profit-maximizing framework. Originality/value This paper provides a rare historical explication of an individual municipal trading enterprise and tramway system placed in its economic context together with its wider theoretical implications.

Contextual analysis and newspaper archives in management history research

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“…Dagblad (de Jong et al, 2017); local newspapers such as the Yorkshire Post and York Evening Press Tennent (2017); specialist technical print media such as The Horological Journal (Proctor, 2013); and professional organisations' publications such as Indústria Portuguesa and Pessoal (Matos, 2016).…”

“…This article incorporated contextual data from multiple sources, including financial broadsheets, to explore the relationship between CEO public announcements and the market's reaction measured by share price fluctuations. Tennent (2017) analysed the changing political, economic and technological environments, which impacted on British public transport systems between 1918 and 1935, using the City of York as a case study. Local newspapers, such as the Yorkshire Post and York Evening Press, provided contextual data on economic facts such as tram fares and routes; and political controversies within the New York Corporation (the local government authority)for example, quoting councillors' detailed comments in committee meetings.…”

Blending Public and Private: British Municipal Trading c. 1889-1975

“…Political persuasion undoubtedly played a role as to how far local authorities deliberately saw their tramway and public transport operations as trading activities. Tennent (2017) highlights the case of 1920s and 1930s York, in which decisions made by the corporation's transport committee, deliberately favoured the protection of gross profit by charging passengers a new fare for every vehicle that they used on a journey. While York's tramway committee was composed of a delegated group of councillors from both the Conservative and Labour parties, the council as a whole remained dominated by the Conservative party who ultimately partly privatised the system in 1935.…”

Los tranvías en los países del socialismo real de los años 1960 y 1970: de la crisis al impulso

“…Es conocido que desde los años cincuenta del siglo XX tuvo lugar en Occidente una eliminación masiva del tranvía, cuando se materializaba su recuperación económica tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Sin embargo, el papel del tranvía en las ciudades empezó a cuestionarse ya desde finales de los años veinte en los países más prósperos, como Estados Unidos, Gran Bretaña y Francia (Yago, 2006;Passalacqua, 2014;Boquet, 2017;Tennant 2017), donde las compañías tranviarias tuvieron poco apoyo público y una competencia muy fuerte de las de autobuses. Entre los años treinta y los años cincuenta, en la mayoría de los países europeos el tranvía continuó teniendo alguna relevancia como medio de transporte urbano (Taplin, 1984;Schmucki, 2010).…”