Passenger assessments of quality in local public transport- measurement, variability and planning implications

Abstract: The aim of this work was to get a more detailed basis for planning of local public transport. With more knowledge of how segments of travellers assess different parts of a journey, bus routes can be planned to fit either all passengers or selected groups better. It will also be possible to evaluate perceived travel utility separately for each category of passengers. Stated Preference questionnaires were distributed to passengers on buses to test different designs of questionnaires and to measure passengers’ assessment of quality. It was found that in mail-back surveys, binary choices are recommended over other Stated Preference methods. It was also shown that the ordering of attributes in the alternatives did not affect the assessment results. Another methodological question was how to express the travel cost to passengers travelling with monthly cards, as cost per month or cost per trip. The study showed that the estimated assessments differ depending on cost expression. The assessment studies showed that most passengers find a bus transfer much more inconvenient, than what we have believed before, except from young people and students. Especially elderly passengers found the waiting time much more uncomfortable than in-vehicle time. Most passengers did not find the walking time more inconvenient than the time in the bus. Finally, it was shown how passenger assessments for specific groups can be combined with each groups’ origin-destination-matrix in an assignment model to evaluate effects of different planning strategies for each group separately. In this example, a trunk route system gave smaller generalised times, than a traditional radial network, not only for the population as a whole, but also for the four studied traveller groups. To summarise, this thesis has shown that a Stated Preference survey may give increased knowledge about how segments of passengers assess different parts of a journey, which is useful for planning of more efficient public transport.