Analysis of Seamless Transit Services in Rural Areas

Abstract

This paper attempts to clarify better combinations of a new local bus system (i. e., DRT: Demand Responsive Transport) and existing regional buses at a bus terminal in order to provide convenient transfers between them in depopulated rural areas, where local buses are more frequent than regional ones. Especially, the paper focuses on how the elderly people's preferences of bus use are influenced by terminal environments, waiting time at the terminal and other level-of-service factors. For that purpose, bus use two SP models of bus use are developed to analyze the influences of seamless transfers at the terminal on the preferences of using both local and regional bus services. Furthermore, the required facilities and services when waiting at the terminal are also investigated, using the Covariance Structure Analysis method, from the perspective of improving the convenience and amenity