Statistical Analysis of Transit User Preferences Including In-Vehicle Crowding and Service Reliability

The paper describes recent experience with the application of an innovative web‐only Stated Preference (SP) survey in the Los Angeles Region. The survey data was used to model the effects of crowding and on‐time performance on transit demand. This SP survey was developed as a 100% self‐complete web survey with most relevant details about a recently completed transit trip are collected in the opening questions, with all SP game scenarios generated dynamically. The survey featured online geocoding of the trip origin and destination, integration with Metro’s trip planner for downloading candidate itineraries, spatial processing using GIS (geographic information systems) data, as well as real‐time parsing of modeled level‐of‐service variables as part of the SP game generation. The SP games were generated pivoting off the reported trip where the respondent was prompted to trade‐off the crowding level or service reliability for travel time and/or cost. Based on the collected survey sample that included 2,609 valid complete responses and over 30,000 generated choice observations, a discrete choice model for transit modes and routes was estimated. The estimation results confirmed that crowding perceived by transit users as a negative factor expressed as a perceptional weight on in‐vehicle time that can reach a value of 1.6 or higher for extreme crowding levels. Additionally, crowding effects proved to be differential by trips purpose, person age, and transit mode. With respect to transit reliability effects, different model specifications were explored with such variables as amount of delay and probability of delay.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB50 Transportation Planning Applications.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Vovsha, Peter
  • Oliveira, Marcelo G Simas
  • Davidson, William
  • Chu, Chaushie
  • Farley, Robert
  • Mitchell, Michael
  • Vyas, Gaurav
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 20p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Crowds; Geographic information systems; Level of service; On time performance; Reliability; Stated preferences; Statistical analysis; Surveys; Transit riders
• Geographic Terms: Los Angeles (California)
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01520107
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-4953
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 26 2014 10:13AM