Relationship of Attitudes Toward Road and Transit Capital Investments and Propensity to Ride Transit Given Traveler Information

In the 2005 Traveler Opinion and Perception Survey, close to 56% of respondents were likely or extremely likely to support road construction and maintenance projects. On the other hand, about 65% of respondents were likely to support public transportation projects. In this paper, we use attitudinal survey-based data from the Chicago metropolitan area to explore the relationship between people's attitudes towards capital investment in transportation and their transit use. We are particularly interested in relationships that might exist between these attitudes and travelers' propensity to increase the use of transit, when they are given real-time transit information. We use bivariate probit models to model the propensity of users to increase transit use when presented with real-time traveler information. In this modeling framework, the traveler's current level of transit use and attitude towards greater use of transit when presented with real-time traveler information, are considered to be endogenous. We find that respondents who support road maintenance projects would consider increasing transit use given transit traveler information, even though they might not necessarily be current transit users. The same trend holds for public transit expansion and maintenance, i.e., those respondents who are concerned with the state of the public transit system and support its maintenance would significantly increase transit use if suitable real-time travel information were available. Based on the models, other factors, which significantly affect the propensity of riders to use transit more in the presence of traveler information, include respondent's age, residence, car accessibility, educational level and safety concerns.