Abstract
Demand responsive transport (DRT) alternatives offer improved mobility to travellers through station-to-destination or door-to-transit operations. In particular, door-to-transit DRT service acts as a feeder to major public transport hubs, making public transport more accessible and attractive to travellers. This work aims to study the mode choice behaviour of travellers between their current modes and a new service, which is a combination of DRT and public transport. The study is conducted in the Northern Beaches area of Sydney, Australia where DRT is expected to serve as a feeder to the newly introduced express bus service called B-Line. A stated preference (SP) experiment is designed where multiple-choice scenarios involving two modes, status quo (SQ) and the new service (combined DRT and public transit), are presented to the participants. The survey uses trip specific information obtained from Google API to form the attributes for the new service. The collected data are analysed using a latent class choice model (LCCM), which segments the observed sample into distinct groups where each group has its own taste and preferences towards the new service option. Results from the study reveal that one of the identified user segments shows 96 percent uptake towards the new service option, while the other user segment shows an uptake of 44 percent. Results also show that individuals making work trips are more likely to opt for the new service. Findings from this study can provide information to urban planners regarding the market uptake of DRT services. Furthermore, the findings can also help planners in implementing segment specific policies aimed at further improving uptake towards DRT along with public transport.
Highlights
Providing improved mobility by making public transport system more accessible to users has been the common objective of transport planning agencies across the world
This study evaluates the market uptake of demand responsive transit (DRT) services, which is expected to serve as the feeder to the main public transit system, in the low population density and high-income area of Northern Beaches in Sydney
DRT services, which started as early as 1960s in the UK [19], have been trialled and implemented in several developed and developing economies of the world (readers are directed to the works by Enoch et al (2004) and Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) (2017a) which provide an extensive review of DRT studies [9,20])
Summary
Providing improved mobility by making public transport system more accessible to users has been the common objective of transport planning agencies across the world. A majority of studies determined the number of trips using macroscopic data such as DRT trip-specific attributes and socio-economic characteristics of the population residing in the area [10,14] These studies do not analyse the trade-offs in the attributes of the current and the combined DRT and public transport modes made by individuals and explaining their underlying choice behaviour as a function of their available socio-demographic information. The findings from this study inform on the market uptake of DRT services in the Northern Beaches area to planners, and segment-specific tastes and preferences of users towards the new alternative.
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