The industrial structure indicates that the local bus sector is
quite labour-intensive. As shown in Fig. 1, the ratio of the labour
expenditure hold in total cost per vehicle-km is between 60% and
80% in the sample periods. Public operations had a more labourintensive
structure (65.1%) than their privately owned counterparts
(54.6%) in 2006. Although the values held around 75% through
1990s, they fell sharply in both the public and private sectors
around 2000. With the public sector retaining a relatively higher
value, this trend can be interpreted as a measure to cut down on the
operating cost for management improvement.