Revisiting public transport service delivery: exploring rail commuters’ attitudes towards fare collection and verification systems

Making Public Transport services more attractive and effective requires attractive and effective ticketing. This requires a clear understanding of user attitudes, needs and expectations. This study explored commuters’ attitudes to fare collection and verification and the underlying factors, their acceptance of the policy of “No-ticket-purchase on-board” and their preferences for fare verification options. Commuters rated their agreement with 17 ticketing related statements in a cross-sectional questionnaire survey conducted along the corridor with the largest proportion of cross-county commuting in Sweden, Stockholm – Uppsala. Four sets of hypotheses were then tested. The average scores were normally distributed and hence analysed using a two-way ANOVA. A One-way chi-square test was conducted to determine the commuters’ preference for fare verification approach. A t-test was used to analyse the perceived quality of ticketing and the commuters’ reaction to the policy of “No-ticket-purchase on-board PT vehicle”. Whilst the results showed that the commuters were relatively uniform in their attitudes, income, commuting route, ticket type and ticket purchase channel affected their attitudes. They were neutral to the policy of “No-ticket-purchase on-board”. Their attitude to fare collection was more positive than that of fare verification and they showed a preference for automatic fare verification. The study highlights a number of policy implications and recommends further research on the feasibility of passive fare verification and on commuters’ preferred options for fare verification

The Movingo integrated ticket: seamless connections across the mälardalen region of Sweden

The need for improved public transport (PT) ticketing in ever-growing deregulated PT markets has made well-designed integrated ticketing systems a priority area of intervention for PT service providers around the world. Yet, very little practical evidence of its impacts are reported in Sweden and in the world at large. The focus of this study was the impacts of the Movingo integrated ticketing scheme in terms of PT patronage, user satisfaction and the perceived quality of the ticketing set-up. Three travel surveys were conducted along the Stockholm-Uppsala route. Methods including logistic regression and correlated t-tests were used to analyse the samples. The findings suggest that the scheme made rail commuting more attractive resulting in an overall increase of about 24% in ticket sales with 3% – 15% car commuters reporting that they patronised PT services after the project. The scheme also resulted in increased rail commuter satisfaction. The overall perceived quality of the ticketing set-up did not however improve due to interoperability challenges. Service providers’ uncertainty about equitable distribution of revenue among the participating service providers, interoperability challenges and the lack of interest among most of the participating service providers to sell Movingo tickets are some issues to be addressed

Commuting and happiness: What ways feel best for what kinds of people?

Question: How happy we are, depends partly on how we live our life and part of our way of life is how we commute between home and work. In that context, we are faced with the question of how much time spent on commuting is optimal happiness wise and with what means of transportation we will feel best. Decisions about commuting are typically made as a side issue in job choice and there are indications that we are bad in predicting how such decisions will work out on our happiness in the long-run. For that reason, it is helpful to know how commuting has worked out on the happiness of other people and on people like you in particular. Earlier research: Several cross-sectional studies found lower happiness among long-distance commuters and among users of public transportation. Yet these differences could be due to selection effects, such as unhappy people opting more often for distant jobs without having a car. Still another limitation is that earlier research has focused on the average effect of commuting, rather than specifying what is optimal for whom. Method: Data of the Dutch ‘Happiness Indicator’ study was analyzed, in the context of which 5000 participants recorded what they had done in the previous day and how happy they had felt during these activities. This data allows comparison between how the same person feels at home and during commute, which eliminates selection effects. The number of participants is large enough to allow a split-up between different kinds of people, in particular among the many well-educated women who participated in this study. Results: People feel typically less happy when commuting than at home, and that the negative difference is largest when commuting with public transportation and smallest when commuting by bike. It is not per se the commuting time that causes happiness loss, but specific combinations of commuting time and commuting mode. Increasing commuting times can even lead to a gain in happiness for certain types of women, when the commute is by bike. Split-up by different kinds of people shows considerable differences, such as an optimal commute alone or even by public transport for some highly educated women. Optimal ways of commuting for different kinds of people are presented in a summary table, from which individuals can read what will fit them best. The differences illustrate that research focusing on average effects of happiness will not help individuals in making a more informed choice. Keywords: happiness, commuting, experience utility, informed choice, DRM

Measuring mobility and transport services:The METPEX project

Public transport is key to access social, economic, civic and cultural life. However, there is still a need to better understand (1) the needs of all transport users and (2) transport provision in cities and regions. The development of an inclusive, validated, passenger experience measurement instrument is the first step in understanding the whole journey, multi-modal journeys. Such a validated tool would enable resources to be focused on areas which travelers felt most important. Such information could be used to create high quality, user centred, integrated, accessible public transport services, capable of attracting and retaining public transport users whilst meeting sustainability targets. This paper describes the METPEX project and the derivation of a set of Key Performance Indicators

Travel Satisfaction with Public Transport: Determinants, User Classes, Regional Disparity and Their Evolution

Increasing public transport ridership while providing a service that better caters to individual travelers poses an important goal and challenge for society, particularly public transport authorities and operators. This study identifies and characterizes current and potential users of public transport in Sweden and identifies the most important determinants of travel satisfaction with Public Transport services for each segment of travelers. In addition, it investigates the changes over time of attribute importance among the different segments and the inter-segment geographical variation of overall satisfaction. The analysis is based on a dataset of almost half a million records. Travelers were clustered based on their socio-demographics, travel patterns and accessibility measures to enable the analysis of determinants of satisfaction for different market segments. The cluster analysis results with five segments of Swedish travelers include: (i) inactive travelers; (ii) long distance commuters; (iii) urban motorist commuters; (iv) rural motorist commuters and; (v) students. By contrasting satisfaction with the importance of each quality of service attribute, three key attributes that should be prioritized by stakeholders are identified: customer interface, operation, network and length of trip time. Interestingly, the results suggest an overall similarity in the importance of service attributes among traveler segments. Nevertheless, some noticeable differences could be observed. The quality of service attributes’ importance levels reveal overall changes in appreciations and consumption goals over time. The more frequent public transport user segments are more satisfied across the board and are characterized by a more balanced distribution of attribute importance while rural motorist commuters are markedly dissatisfied with service operation attributes. This work can help authorities to tailor their policies to specific traveler groups.Transport and Plannin

The prospects of fare-free public transport: Evidence from Tallinn

The subsidy level of public transport systems varies considerably among systems worldwide. While limited-scale free-fare public transport (FFPT) services such as limited campaigns and fare evasion for special groups or specific services are prevalent, there is only limited evidence on the consequences of introducing a full-fledged FFPT. The case of Tallinn, Estonia offers a full-scale experiment that provides a unique opportunity to investigate the impacts of FFPT. This study examines travel pattern changes based on individual travel habit survey shortly before and almost 1 year after the introduction of FFPT policy in Tallinn based on interviews and travel diaries of a random sample of 1500 household. We analyse modal shift effects and whether they are driven by trip generation or trip substitution, travel attitudes and satisfactions as well as impacts on equity, employment prospects, and trip destination choices. Almost a year after the introduction of FFPT, public transport usage increased by 14 % and there is evidence that the mobility of low-income residents has improved. The effect of FFPT on ridership is substantially lower than those reported in previous studies due to the good level of service provision, high public transport usage and low public transport fees that existed already prior to the FFPT.Unfortunately several errors appeared in Table 2 in the original publication of this article. The corrected Table 2 is given in this erratum.Transport and Plannin

Declining sustainability: The case of shopping trip energy consumption

As typical shopping behavior changed from foot-based visits to neighborhood shopping streets or corner grocery stores to auto-based visits to large-scale retail stores, shopping trip energy consumption increased substantially in the Osaka metropolitan area between 1970 and 2000. Underlying this phenomenon are, among others, progress of motorization, declining household size, and diminishing households with a homemaker. The effects of these and other factors are examined through an analysis of variance of large-scale household travel survey data from 1970 and 2000. It is shown that changes in demographics and socioeconomics alone would not have produced the observed magnitude of increase in shopping trip energy consumption. The more substantial contributor has been structural change, which has presumably been caused by the urban system adjusting its elements—land use, transportation networks, facility location, retail systems, and so forth—to adapt to increased ownership and use of the automobile. © 2008 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Examining the effects of out-of-home and in-home constraints on leisure activity participation in different seasons of the year

Using multi-day, multi-period travel diaries data of 56 days (four waves of two-week diaries) for 67 individuals in Stockholm, this study aims to examine the effects of out-of-home and in-home constraints (e.g. teleworking, studying at home, doing the laundry, cleaning and taking care of other household member[s]) on individuals’ day-to-day leisure activity participation decisions in four different seasons. This study also aims to explore the effects of various types of working schedules (fixed, shift, partial- and full-flexible) on individuals’ decisions to participate in day-to-day leisure activities. A pooled model (56 days) and wave-specific models (14 days in each wave) are estimated by using dynamic ordered Probit models. The effects of various types of working schedules are estimated by using 28 days of two waves’ data. The results show that an individual’s leisure activity participation decision is significantly influenced by out-of-home work durations but not influenced by in-home constraints, regardless of any seasons. Individuals with shift working hours engage less in day-to-day leisure activities than other workers’ types in both spring and summer seasons. The thermal indicator significantly affects individuals’ leisure activity participation decisions during the autumn season. Individuals exhibit routine behaviour characterized by repeated decisions in participating in day-to-day leisure activities that can last up to 14 days, regardless of any seasons