A demand responsive public transport for a spatially scattered population in a developing country

Abstract

Rural areas in developing countries suffer from substandard public transit services. The authorities find it difficult to provide quality transport primarily due to budget constraints pertaining to transport infrastructure development, which accommodates spatially heterogonous demand. A questionnaire survey based study conducted in a sparsely populated rural region in Sri Lanka revealed that economically deprived and dependent population tended to choose public transit more over private. The key factors identified in this study that determine the choice of transit were age, gender, education, motorized vehicle ownership, income, travel frequency and transit accessibility. This study further examined the commuter’s willingness towards switching to Demand Responsive Transport system (DRT). Given that DRT was introduced, the commuters responded strongly to pay additional fare whereas moderate agreement was observed in expected comfort level and cashless ticketing. On average, the respondents consented to pay additional fare of SLR 10.75 (0.054 USD) and to wait for 11.65 min to access DRT service. The willingness towards switching to DRT was relatively high in present private transit users than that of in present public transit users. The high level of mobile phone penetration in the study region indicated the feasibility of incorporating state-of-the-art computing and communication technologies to administer DRT system. Authors, therefore recommend transport agencies to assess the financial benefits of introducing DRT service by optimizing the existing resources based on the identified influential parameters.