Examining the Determinants of Urban Rail Station Choice in Denver, Colorado

The authors investigate the station choice behavior of park-and-ride (PnR) commuters in the Denver light rail system, which has multiple fare zones and offers free parking in the majority of stations. Based on an on-board survey conducted in 2015 by the Regional Transportation District (RTD) on the Denver light rail, approximately half of the PnR commuters do not drive to the closest station. Using the on-board survey data, the authors develop multinomial logit models, estimate marginal effects, and conduct sensitivity analysis to quantify the statistical significance and level of influence of potential determinants of station choice. The authors' choice set includes 6 stations ranked based on network distance from the origin. The authors find that travel time in the light rail, travel time in traffic before boarding, fare, parking capacity, land use mix, population density, captive station, number of light rail lines connected by station, time of travel, and carpooling all influence station choice and the effects differ moving from Station 1 (closest station) to Station 6. Most importantly, based on the elasticity results, fare seems to be one of the most influential factors in station choice, which confirms transit agencies' concerns of individuals driving further to pay a lower fare.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP075 Standing Committee on Light Rail Transit.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Liu, Chang
  • Bardaka, Eleni
  • Fell, Harrison
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: References;
• Pagination: 4p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Commuters; Fares; Light rail transit; Multinomial logits; Park and ride; Rail transit stations; Sensitivity analysis; Significance (Statistics)
• Geographic Terms: Denver (Colorado)
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01697303
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-04549
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:50PM