Legal Definitions - traffic balance

Traffic balance refers to the total amount of money a company or entity collects from its customers for providing transportation services, specifically for moving passengers or freight (goods).

Here are some examples to illustrate this concept:

• Imagine a large international airline. At the end of a financial quarter, the airline calculates all the revenue it earned from selling passenger tickets for flights around the world, as well as the fees it collected for transporting cargo in the belly of its planes. This combined total represents the airline's traffic balance for that period, reflecting the financial outcome of its core business of moving people and goods.

• Consider a national railway company that operates both passenger trains and freight trains. Over a year, the company tallies up all the money received from individuals purchasing train tickets for their journeys. Simultaneously, it adds all the payments from businesses that used its freight services to ship raw materials or finished products across the country. The sum of these collected revenues from both passenger and freight operations constitutes the railway company's annual traffic balance.

• A local bus service in a metropolitan area collects fares from daily commuters, students, and other passengers using its routes. It also has a small division that contracts with local businesses to deliver packages within the city using its existing bus network during off-peak hours. The total revenue generated from both the passenger fares and the package delivery service over a month would be considered the bus service's traffic balance, indicating the financial inflow from its transportation activities.