BUS SERVICE ELASTICITY, HEADWAY AND DISTANCE TRAVELLED

O.R. Report R186 attempted to explain the change in receipts on thirty bus services converted to one man operation between November 1970 and November 1971. An important result to emerge from the analysis was the determination of a service elasticity, relating passenger demand to miles run which appeared rather higher than that suggested by independent analysis. This memorandum describes further analysis which has been undertaken with the same data to investigate the effect that headway has on the passenger response to bus miles changes. The results indicate that the bus miles elasticity is related to headway. For example, if a service with no parallels has a headway of 10 minutes the miles run elasticity is estimated to be +0.5 and if it has a 15 minutes' headway the elasticity rises to +0.75. Another factor which seems likely to influence service elasticity is distance travelled by passengers. An "a priori" generalised cost approach, as used in OR Report R210, suggests, for example, that for a passenger travelling 1.5 miles on a six minute service the service elasticity would be +0.26 whereas for a person travelling 0.5 miles on the same service it would be twice that at +0.53. In this memorandum the results of the empirical and theoretical analyses have been used to produce a set of service elasticities which are related both to headway and distance travelled. /Author/TRRL/

• Corporate Authors:

  London Transport Executive

  Economic and Operational Research, Transad House
  London,   England 
• Authors:
  • BELL, G J
• Publication Date: 1976-1

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: Figures; Tables;
• Pagination: 10 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus transportation; Buses; Costs; Demand; Elasticity (Mechanics); Headways; Length; Passenger miles; Passengers; Personnel; Timetables; Travel; Travel demand; Trip length; Vehicle miles of travel
• Uncontrolled Terms: One
• ITRD Terms: 1272: Bus; 224: Cost; 285: Demand (econ); 5912: Elasticity; 685: Headway; 698: Journey; 6488: Length; 9054: One; 102: Personnel; 1186: Timetable; 292: Vehicle mile
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Motor Carriers; Operations and Traffic Management; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00159843
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL)
• Report/Paper Numbers: Memorandum 311
• Files: ITRD, TRIS
• Created Date: Feb 16 1978 12:00AM