Factor Analysis for the Study of Determinants of Public Transit Ridership

Syed, Sharfuddin J; Khan, Ata M.

doi:10.5038/2375-0901.3.3.1

Cited by 32 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Causal analyses are an attempt to posit and test hypotheses about the factors influencing transit ridership (Cervero, 1990;Chung, 1997;Gomez-Ibanez, 1996;Hartgen and Kinnamon, 1999;Hendrickson, 1986;Liu, 1995, 1996;Kitamura, 1989;Kohn, 2000;Liu, 1993;McLeod et al, 1991;Morral and Bloger, 1996;Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, 1995;Spillar and Rutherford, 1988;Syed and Khan, 2000). While this is clearly an important area of inquiry for transportation policy research, studies of this type share surprisingly little in terms of data, methods, or findings.…”

Section: Previous Research On the Factors Affecting Transit Ridershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature and/or nurture? Analyzing the determinants of transit ridership across US urbanized areas

Taylor¹,

Miller²,

Iseki

et al. 2009

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

257

225

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a b s t r a c tPublic subsidy of transit services has increased dramatically in recent years, with little effect on overall ridership. Quite obviously, a clear understanding of the factors influencing transit ridership is central to decisions on investments in and the pricing and deployment of transit services. Yet the literature about the causes of transit use is quite spotty; most previous aggregate analyses of transit ridership have examined just one or a few systems, have not included many of the external, control variables thought to influence transit use, and have not addressed the simultaneous relationship between transit service supply and consumption. This study addresses each of these shortcomings by (1) conducting a cross-sectional analysis of transit use in 265 US urbanized areas, (2) testing dozens of variables measuring regional geography, metropolitan economy, population characteristics, auto/highway system characteristics, and transit system characteristics, and (3) constructing two-stage simultaneous equation regression models to account for simultaneity between transit service supply and consumption. We find that most of the variation in transit ridership among urbanized areas -in both absolute and relative terms -can be explained by factors outside of the control of public transit systems: (1) regional geography (specifically, area of urbanization, population, population density, and regional location in the US), (2) metropolitan economy (specifically, personal/household income), (3) population characteristics (specifically, the percent college students, recent immigrants, and Democratic voters in the population), and (4) auto/highway system characteristics (specifically, the percent carless households and nontransit/non-SOV trips, including commuting via carpools, walking, biking, etc.). While these external factors clearly go a long way toward determining the overall level of transit use in an urbanized area, we find that transit policies do make a significant difference. The observed range in both fares and service frequency in our sample could account for at least a doubling (or halving) of transit use in a given urbanized area. Controlling for the fact that public transit use is strongly correlated with urbanized area size, about 26% of the observed variance in per capita transit patronage across US urbanized areas is explained in the models presented here by service frequency and fare levels. The observed influence of these two factors is consistent with both the literature and intuition: frequent service draws passengers, and high fares drive them away.

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Section: Previous Research On the Factors Affecting Transit Ridershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature and/or nurture? Analyzing the determinants of transit ridership across US urbanized areas

Taylor¹,

Miller²,

Iseki

et al. 2009

Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice

257

225

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some of these cannot be controlled by PT providers, such as employment levels and income (Gomez-Ibanez 2006;Taylor and Miller 2004;Thompson and Brown 2006), while other factors are controllable, such as pricing, service quality, marketing, and convenience (Syed and Khan 2000;Taylor and Fink 2003;Transit Cooperative Research Program 1999. However, in this exploratory study we focus on another factor influencing PT usage, attitudes towards PT.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Attitudes towards public transport in New Zealand

Murray¹,

Walton

Thomas

2010

Transportation

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“…Research using statistical analyses typically focuses on evaluating the relative causal influences of internal and external factors on ridership [18][19][20][21][22]. Some studies, however, conducted interviews with transit system managers and focused on how some agencies were more successful than others in increasing transit ridership and how the managers of transit systems perceive influences of various factors on ridership [23,24].…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%