Staffing and Expertise Requirements
See a structural overview of the authority’s staff and department functions for a system based on a gross-cost area contract. Compare this structure with the authority structures for the various other system reform options.

Since one of the principal reasons for having an area contract is to give the operator the planning responsibility, to have him prepare schedules and be responsible for daily operations, these functions need only to be overseen by the authority to ensure the service is satisfactory and that it complies with all agreements.

The authority’s public face
The authority must be heavily involved in marketing since it has the sole responsibility for the bus service and it should be aware of public aspirations for, and complaints about, bus service. It should also ensure that the service being offered is suitable for the community.

Issuing tickets and collecting revenue
Under the gross-cost arrangement, all revenues are for the account of the authority so there will be a need for a division to look after ticketing — including smart card tickets if available — and to keep track of all on- and off-bus fare revenue collected. Reasonable sized ticketing and accounts departments are likely to be necessary together with a survey division and an inspectorate to ensure all fare revenue is collected.

The authority should also be responsible for fare setting and monitoring the costs and productivity of the operator. This will involve maintaining a survey team to undertake regular checks. Since the operator is to be paid according to the amount of service provided (kilometers or hours or a combination of both) a reasonably sized survey division is needed to check service provision together with an inspectorate to ensure all fare revenue is collected.

Tendering
The authority must also select the operator and set out, at least for the purposes of an initial tender, all the routes, frequencies, and hours of service to enable the tenderers to cost the service. An ad hoc tendering selection division may be needed to make the selection and then follow up monitoring the performance. Since it is not likely that the area would be re-tendered after an initial period such as eight to 10 years there should be no need for a permanent tendering division.

Staffing levels
An overall staffing level is hard to determine since it depends very much on the functions to be performed and the complexity of each function; these will vary greatly from city to city. Cities which are expanding rapidly will require higher staffing levels than those which are relatively well developed. For a city of about 1m population and say 1000 buses in service, the staff levels needed to regulate an area, gross-cost contract system would probably be of the order of 100 to 200 depending on the workload. Larger cities would need more staff but the increase would not be proportional to population.

See also
Institutional requirements
The authority as executive