Studying the tastes effecting mode choice behavior of travelers under transit service disruptions

Abstract

Public transit (PT) service disruption is a phenomenon which is quite common across the world and is characterized by significant delays or cancelations of transit services. These disruptions can substantially affect commuter trips, particularly in cities with significant PT mode share, which triggers a change in both short-term and long-term traveler behavior. While service disruptions due to cancelations have been well studied in the literature, there has been limited work on studying the impacts of disruptions due to significant service delays on traveler behavior. This study analyzes data from a joint revealed preference cum stated preference (RP-SP) survey conducted in the Chicago metropolitan area in the US to understand traveler’s mode choice under the two forms of PT service disruptions. The trip specific attributes of the other competing alternatives for an individual were extracted using Google’s application programming interface (API) in the survey. The collected data is analyzed using the latent class choice model formulation. The results show that travelers find canceled PT service situations 3 times more onerous than service disruptions due to delays. While the value of travel time savings under disruptions due to delays and cancelations for rail users is found to be around US$10/hr and US$32/hr respectively, for bus users the values are US$19/hr and US$43/hr respectively. The findings from this study provide separate sets of preferences under each disruption scenario to planners. This information will be useful in planning remedial actions aimed at minimizing the impact of transit service disruptions.