Analysis of factors influencing mode shift to public transit in a developing country

Abstract

Vehicles are a major invention having significant impact on human progress.However, increasing private vehicle usage can cause many threats to the society like congestion, depleting environmental quality etc. The study is taken up to identify the factors influencing usage of private and public modes, with the help of mode choice models. The influence of psychological factors based on the ‘Theory of Planned Behaviour’ were analysed in the study.The variables considered for the study include service attributes like travel cost, travel time, waiting time, comfort and latent variables like ‘attitude’, ‘subjective norm’, ‘perceived behavioural control’ etc. Revealed preference survey was adopted to know the sociodemographic details and a stated preference survey was adopted to study the mode shift of people to a better public transit facility.Travel time, waiting time and travel cost had negative influence in the utility of new public transit mode.Comfort and perceived behavioural control had positive influence in utility of a new public transit service.The study was useful in developing a better understanding of mode choice behaviour and developing insights for policy formulations for improving the public transit.