Investigating the Determining Factors for Transit Travel Demand by Bus Mode in US Metropolitan Statistical Areas

Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2015

Subject Area

mode - bus, place - north america, planning - travel demand management, planning - safety/accidents, planning - personal safety/crime, organisation - management, operations - service span, operations - frequency, economics - pricing, ridership - demand

Keywords

Transit travel demand, Transit supply, External factors, Internal factors

Abstract

Proper understanding of the nature of the transit travel demand is at the heart of transportation policy making and the success of transit systems. Unfortunately, most of the existing studies have focused on a single or few transit systems or metropolitan areas to analyze the determinants of transit travel demand. This study is an attempt to investigate the determining factors for transit travel demand by bus mode in the United States at Metropolitan Statistical Areas in 2010. The multiple regression results indicate that seven internal factors, which the transit managers and operators have control over, and only one external variable, namely gas price, show to have significant impacts on transit travel demand by bus mode. Transit supply, transit fare, average headway, transit coverage, service intensity, revenue hours, and safety are the contributing internal factors for transit demand by bus. This indicates that the mechanisms to increase the transit ridership patronage are in the hands of the transit authorities, which further indicates that they do not need to depend on outside world to attract more ridership but can do so by adjusting the influential internal factors that are under their control.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Mineta Transportation Institute, copyright remains with them.

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