The Public Transport Preferences of Elderly People; A study related to individual capacity and environmental stress in service route traffic and other systems

Abstract: Providing accessible, acceptable and appreciated public transport for elderly people is essential. This work studies the relation between elderly people’s preferences of standard factors in different public transport systems, and their physical capacity. Three public transport systems are focused, service route traffic, trunk route traffic and special transport service, which demand different capacity from the travellers to use. Six quantitative studies were carried out, in which four traveller groups were studied: service route travellers, STS entitled service route travellers, STS travellers and travellers in trunk route traffic. The included standard factors are: walking distance, travel time, headway, transfer, waiting time at transfers, booking, booking time, get seated, vehicle type, travel alone. Results showed that the physical capacity in the traveller groups differed, with STS travellers having least physical capacity. The valuations of the standard factors varied between the groups and the overall pattern was that those with low physical capacity had higher valuations for most of the factors. Walking distances turned out to be of very large importance for groups with low physical capacity, while avoiding booking was important among those with more physical capacity. Other factors like getting seated before the bus starts, and type of vehicle (for some groups), was also shown to be important. A secondary aim was to study whether the stated preference method conjoint analysis was applicable to study elderly people’s preferences. The overall conclusion is that this is possible, but special considerations must be taken concerning the design of the study. Despite the difficulties, however, knowledge about elderly people preferences gained through conjoint analysis proves to be valuable input in the process of planning a public transport that at the same time provides good quality to elderly people and is cost-effective for society.