Crime, environments, service characteristics, and transit ridership: a multilevel analysis
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
2025
Subject Area
place - north america, place - urban, planning - personal safety/crime, planning - service improvement, ridership - behaviour
Keywords
Transit ridership, Crime, Multilevel negative binomial regression, Forest-based classification and regression, Contextual environments, Service characteristics
Abstract
Although crime is well recognized as a factor detrimental to ridership, fewer empirical studies have tested the effect of crime on ridership and results are inconclusive. Moreover, existing studies seldom perform multilevel analysis despite using data with a hierarchical structure. This research addresses these gaps using the 2018 data of the five largest cities in the Texas Triangle and multilevel negative binomial regression. The results reveal a non-linear relationship between crime and ridership after controlling for other effects. Transit service characteristics and crime are the top predictors of ridership. The effect of transit trip rate on ridership varies contingent upon crime. The findings have significant implications for research on transit ridership and the improvement of transit services.
Rights
Permission to publish the abstract has been given by SpringerLink, copyright remains with them.
Recommended Citation
Li, J., He, Q., & Pan, Q. (2025). Crime, environments, service characteristics, and transit ridership: a multilevel analysis. Transportation, 52(4), 1375-1398.
