Abstract
Providing public transport in areas of low demand has long proved to be a challenge to policy makers and practitioners. With the developing economic, social and environmental trends, there is pressure for alternative solutions to the policy of subsidising conventional bus services. One potential solution is to adopt more flexible routes and/or timetables to better match the required demand. Therefore such 'on demand' or 'Demand Responsive Transport' (DRT) services (known as paratransit in the US) have been adopted in a number of locations. This paper seeks to explore the effects of area-wide factors on the demand of DRT by reporting the results of a statistical analysis of DRT service provision in the metropolitan region of Greater Manchester, the public transport authority of which offers one of the largest and most diverse range of DRT schemes in the UK. Specifically, this paper employs a multilevel modelling approach to investigate the impact of both DRT supply-oriented factors at the service area level and socio-economic factors at the lower super output area (LSOA) level on the average number of trips made by DRT per year. This hierarchical or 'nested' structure was adopted because typically the LSOAs within the same Service Area may share similar characteristics. It is found that the demand for DRT services was higher in areas with low car ownership, low population density, high pro- portion of white people, and high levels of social deprivation, measured in terms of income, employment, education, housing and services, health and disability, and living environment.
Highlights
For the purpose of this paper, public transport can be categorised as being Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) if: (1) the service is available to the general public; (2) the service is provided by low capacity road vehicles such as small buses, vans or taxis; (3) the service responds to changes in demand by either altering its route and/or its timetable; and (4) the fare is charged on a per passenger and not a per vehicle basis
On the demand side a higher amount of DRT trips were generated from areas with a lower population density; a lower proportion of people working from home; a higher proportion of white people; and higher levels of deprivation
This paper presented the results of a quantitative analysis of DRT provision in Greater Manchester to investigate the effects of various socio-economic factors on the demand for
Summary
For the purpose of this paper, public transport can be categorised as being Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) if: (1) the service is available to the general public (i.e. it is not restricted to particular groups of user according to age or disability criteria); (2) the service is provided by low capacity road vehicles such as small buses, vans or taxis; (3) the service responds to changes in demand by either altering its route and/or its timetable; and (4) the fare is charged on a per passenger and not a per vehicle basis.In practice, in more developed economies DRT has emerged as an intermediate mode that can provide public transport access to members of the general public in areas where demand is too low to support conventional forms of bus-based public transport systems. Despite the apparent increase in the number and scale of such locations, DRT remains a relatively niche tool applied by transport providers, and is often restricted to specialist groups of users like the elderly and/or mobility impaired. One reason for this would seem to be a lack of confidence amongst public transport providers as to the effectiveness of such DRT schemes due largely to the non-mainstream reputation. This is in spite of a growing recognition of the importance of determining the ‘user needs’ when planning a new service as noted, for example, in Finn et al (2004)
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