The presence of essential amenities, such as grocery stores, parks, and employment, within convenient distances impacts individuals’ travel behavior and quality of life. Whereas what is perceived as a convenient distance varies among individuals, the goal of this research is to better understand perceived convenience in the context of differing lifestyles, sociodemographic characteristics, and personal preferences. Using an online travel behavior survey with a sample of 711 residents from Calgary, Canada, we segmented individuals into eight distinct groups based on travel behavior and personal characteristics. We then examined their perceived convenience to reach various amenities among each group, and the actual distances to these amenities. Our results reveal eight distinct typologies that differ according to mode choice, lifestyle, neighborhood characteristics, and trip satisfaction. We observe that distance negatively affects reported convenience to work, grocery stores, and parks, but reported convenience is also closely related to modes available as well as to transport and home location options that meet individuals’ preferences. Typologies in which individuals are able to select their preferred transport options or home location typically report a higher convenience of access to various destinations, and this is especially true for typologies with high cycling, walking, and public transport mode shares. This study demonstrates the importance of providing individuals with a variety of affordable options in relation to transport mode and home locations, which can be of interest to researchers and planners concerned with improving convenience of access to local amenities by sustainable modes.
Public transport ridership retention is a challenge for many cities. To develop comprehensive strategies aimed at retaining riders, it is necessary to understand the aspects of public transport that influence users to become loyal to the system. This paper analyses relevant literature regarding the causes of satisfaction and loyalty in public transport. We find that the service factors most associated with satisfaction are on-board cleanliness and comfort, courteous and helpful behaviour from operators, safety, as well as punctuality and frequency of service. On the other hand, loyalty is associated with users' perceptions of value-for-money, on-board safety and cleanliness, interactions with personnel and the image and commitment to public transport that users feels. Furthermore, the results elucidate that the concept of loyalty is best defined based on users' intentions to continue using the service, their willingness to recommend it to others, their overall satisfaction, but also and most importantly, their image of and involvement with public transport. Public transport users who have a positive image of the agency and consider public transport an integral component of city life are more likely to demonstrate loyalty and act like ambassadors for public transport agencies.
Abstract A better understanding of the demand for bus transit is vital to the provision of efficient and reliable service. The objective of this study is to better understand the characteristics of demand for bus transit service in relation to bus-stop spacing and service reliability. The availability of accurate and robust data is lacking in previous empirical work. This research analyzes changes in passenger demand following implementation of a bus stop Streamline project at TriMet, the regional transit provider in the Portland metropolitan area. The study makes extensive use of archived bus operations and passenger activity data recorded at the level of the individual stop. The findings indicate that bus stop consolidation and relocation have a negligible impact on demand and that improvements in transit service reliability can adequately compensate for the potential loss of passengers resulting from changes in the number and location of stops. A theoretical framework for analyzing demand is presented to help transit planners better understand the consequences of proposed service changes on ridership.
Traditionally, transit market research has categorized passengers into two distinct groups: captive riders and choice riders. Market analyses that depend on such broad categories are likely to overlook important details about the needs and desires of their customer base. This study attempts to better understand the complexities of the different groups who take transit by using information from five years of customer satisfaction questionnaires collected by two Canadian transit providers. Employing a series of clustering techniques, the analysis reveals that nine market segments are present across different modes in both transit agencies. Three different overarching groups of transit users are identified based on income and vehicle access: choice users (~69%), captive users (~18%), and captive-by-choice users (~13%). The groups are consistent across transit modes and in different geographical regions and are generalizable enough to be widely applicable as a conceptual framework for segmenting and understanding public transit users.
Ridership is a key goal in the transit industry. Conventional transit analysis focuses on two types of users—captive and choice riders—but rarely aims to understand the preferences of non-transit riders. This research aims to better understand habits and preferences—for both users and non-users of the transit system—as they relate to the transit market in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Our research first articulates different broad market segments commonly considered in transit research and follows by describing how specific features of transit service characteristics may play out in influencing demand. We describe the source of two surveys analyzed in this application, one for existing transit users and a separate one for non-users. Our analysis approach employs factor and cluster analysis to shed light on preference and other characteristics for eight different segments of transit users or potential transit users. The discussion section and conclusions highlight the findings and prescribe relevant policy recommendations.
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