ABSTRACT
Why have public transport experts not discussed these issues for such a long time and why are they now beginning to become more and more prominent? There are evident historical reasons for this. Firstly, the legal framework for railways and its specic form of customer-orientation developed in times when it actually had a monopoly as a transport system in many areas. As the rise of motorized individual transport put pressure on PT, it survived in Europe thanks to public support and governmental protection. The safeguarding of this support and of legal sheltering had a central meaning for public transport services in the post-war decades. They were also able to advance by leaps and bounds through the decades-long xing of fare rates and franchising in goods transport, which held road-based competition at bay. The limitation of enforceable passengers’ rights was also among these factors. This was certainly a justiable effort to protect an ailing public transport industry against customers’ demands in order to ensure that it would survive at all.2
