Modelling willingness to pay for improved public transport services: The challenges of non-response to stated preference hypothetical questions

The paper focuses on the modelling attempt of willingness to pay for an improved bus service in selected cities and towns of Malaysia. Using responses from onboard intercept surveys, 1,130 samples of bus passengers have been analysed so as to arrive at a simplified model of how passengers trade off their money with possible upgrading of bus services elements. The willingness to pay among these bus riders was very low, despite the high expectation of improvements aspired by them. For service providers, fares are a function of travel time, travel distance and other operating costs. For passengers, the utility function is explained by costs, time, distance and various latent parameters. This paper highlights the significant results of chi-square analysis at various confidence levels. However, modelling the exact utility function of preferences for staggered increased in fares could not be carried out successfully at 95 percent confidence level, due to the relatively small number of respondents stating their and/or undecided response to willingness to pay for the additional fare rate. The issue of non-response to hypothetical survey questions is also raised, explaining the difficulties in modelling this choice behaviour

Urban mobility: moving forward post COVID19

The main aim of the webinar is to discuss how public open spaces such as streets, squares, parks, might change, or might need to change because of Covid-19. Since PEREKABANDAR’s concern is about urban design and the quality of the built environment, urban mobility thus plays a very important role in ensuring the accessibility and connectivity of places,and can impact the vitality of public spaces directly. How Covid-19 has affected urban mobility, for example in how ridership and operation of public transport have been impacted by the social distancing requirement, and other forms of mobility that might have emerged, or not, given the different contexts? If we looked at places like Milan and Bogota, and later on Oakland, these cities were quick to reclaim some space from cars so people can walk or cycle. But we haven’t really seen any of these measures put in place here. Why do you think that is? Our public transport system is still very KL-centric, and even then it’s still not comprehensive. Do you think that the progress of building and providing public transport infrastructure will be hampered by the pandemic, especially given the risk of crowding on public transport? Will people’s fear reduce the demand and thus the authority might see no point in developing the system? And now that we are slowly making our way back into the city, what are the possible urban mobility strategies to support the vitality of public spaces, taking into account the requirements imposed by the pandemic? And more importantly is how our local contextual conditions is taken into account? For example, our cities are not exactly mixed in terms of functions, many people actually live in suburbs. So how can urban mobility play a role in revitalising public spaces taking all these things into consideration

Building resilient community for the future

Qualitative Strength in Ensuring a Sustained Community Breakout Session by UIAM National Planning Congress 2020 Malaysia Institute of Planner

Modelling willingness to pay for improved public transport services: the challenges of non-response to stated preference hypothetical questions

The paper focuses on the modelling attempt of willingness to pay for an improved bus service in selected cities and towns of Malaysia. Using responses from onboard intercept surveys, 1,130 samples of bus passengers have been analysed so as to arrive at a simplified model of how passengers trade off their money with possible upgrading of bus services elements. The willingness to pay among these bus riders was very low, despite the high expectation of improvements aspired by them. For service providers, fares are a function of travel time, travel distance and other operating costs. For passengers, the utility function is explained by costs, time, distance and various latent parameters. This paper highlights the significant results of chi-square analysis at various confidence levels. However, modelling the exact utility function of preferences for staggered increased in fares could not be carried out successfully at 95 percent confidence level, due to the relatively small number of respondents stating their and/or undecided response to willingness to pay for the additional fare rate. The issue of non-response to hypothetical survey questions is also raised, explaining the difficulties in modelling this choice behaviour

A theoretical framework of sustainability in air transportation planning and future prospects of airport infrastructure upgrading : a case study of Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA 2)

Air transportation has become the fastest growing mode of transportation in adapting with the transportation facilities and services provided. The developments of air transportation have surrounded with the introduction of much larger transport aircraft and rising airport infrastructure upgrading nowadays. Due to the increasing importance of enlargements in airport facility, this has become a concern for policy makers and academics. Although the time value and greatest cost efficiency are obtained from the airport facilities, there are negative externalities produced by airport developments. Due to the increasing importance of enlargements in airport capacity, it should also regard as the management of the environmental impact on surrounding areas. Literature has found that airport operations may produce various regulated pollutants, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter (PM) (Luther, 2007).This paper aims at identifying the sustainability in air transportation planning and future prospects of airport infrastructure upgrading; using the KLIA 2 as a case study. At most airports, the major environmental concerns embrace local air quality, noise, sustainability and recycling along with habitat and wildlife management. Issues relating to the sustainability of specific industrial sectors such as aviation are relatively under researched. Procedures and technologies for environmental protection, environmental efficiency and impact mitigation receive a considerable degree of attention from industry, government and academia alike has to be increased. Even though the airport expansion is very important to cater the demand, however, there are some policies and strategies that need to be considered to balance the need and the future. Conventionally, the planning of airport infrastructure upgrading has only focused on elements surrounded by the airport; such as supply and demand forecasts and other aeronautical and engineering. But the recent airport framework presents new situations that cannot be solved by traditional methods since new and external variables are intrinsic to the decision-making process (Graham and Guyer, 1999).The study will focus on the environmental impacts of the KLIA 2 constructions which are ongoing. However, this paper highlight the literature background on impact of airport expansion on air pollution and noise issues to the environment as well as to the community

An infrastructure master plan for developing Pulau Pangkor as a new eco-tourist destination

The vision of Perak Amanjaya Development Plan is to enhance the socio-economic status of Perak people corresponding to the Federal Government’s development philosophy. In order to achieve this vision, Institut Darul Ridzuan is committed in playing the roles whereby IDR assists the Perak State Government in formulating development policies and initiating innovative strategies and programs with the aim of driving peace, stability and progress by focusing on the delivery of “3Qs” – Quality Opportunity, Quality Income and Quality Living. Therefore, collaboration with local and International research communities, helped IDR to gain insights into the theoretical and practical problems concerning the development in Perak State. One of the projects is to study the infrastructure and public utilities in Pulau Pangkor as vibrant tourism destination. To achieve the goal, the research is conducted regarding the infrastructure master plan for developing Pulau Pangkor as a new eco-tourism tourist destination

Level of services (Los) for public bus and passengers aspiration in Kerian district, Malaysia

Public transportation facilitates the mobility of activities and goods from all sustainable development key dimensions. Over the past decades, more trips of public transportation move people towards a more sustainable future, by reducing congestion on the roads and increasing the efficiency of the road system. The research aims at analysing the passenger’s aspiration and perspective of sustainable public transport measure and evaluating Malaysian rural bus services, using the case study of Kerian District in the state of Perak. On-board intercept passenger survey and adoption of Geographical Information System (GIS) / Global Positioning System (GPS) were used to collect the primary data. The research suggested that whilst the services levels are less than those aspired by the passengers, there are many improvement areas to be prioritised in the near future. Keywords: Sustainable transportation; sustainable transport indicator; transport planning; sustainable transportation dimension; passenger’s aspiration. eISSN 2398-4279 © 2018. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia