Public Transport Crowding Valuation: Evidence from College Students in Guangzhou

Abstract

Overcrowding has grown to be an increasingly important issue for public transit in Guangzhou, China. To capture traveler benefits of reduced crowding from improved public transport, it is necessary to identify the relevant importance of crowding to travelers. This paper analyzes the disutility of crowding in metro car and bus transit with discrete choice models. Based on the stated preference survey data from college students in Guangzhou, the results show that there is non-negligible impact of crowding on passenger travel. The relationship between the disutility of crowding and standee density is not linear; that is, the disutility increases at a modest rate as the standee density increases when it is easy to move around in cars and increases rapidly when it is difficult to move around in cars. Also, there is only a slight difference between the effects of crowding on metro and bus transit.

The underlying effect of public transport reliability on users’ satisfaction

“…One well-founded hypothesis is that this curve is concave, as the marginal rate of substitution between crowding and in-vehicle travel time (i.e. crowding multiplier) obtained in different discrete choice experiments (Batarce et al, 2015;Liu & Wen, 2016;Tirachini et al, 2017;Wardman & Whelan, 2011;Yap et al, 2018) increases. It is important to emphasize that this concavity might not hold when analysing the effect of crowding and satisfaction, as there is no evidence suggesting a direct relationship between the value of time and satisfaction.…”

Crowding on public transport using smart card data during the COVID-19 pandemic: New methodology and case study in Chile

“…However, even though it is widely used by stakeholders around the world ( Li & Hensher, 2013 ), there is no worldwide consensus on the acceptable crowding levels. Threshold values are highly dependent on the countries, ranging from four in Europe ( Haywood, Koning, & Monchambert, 2017 ) to seven in China ( Liu & Wen, 2016 ). In any case, the number of standing passengers per square meter is often not available at a bus level.…”

Valuation of Metro Crowding Considering Heterogeneity of Route Choice Behaviors

“…Time and cost have been considered the main attributes to access travel decisions in the past ( 1 ). Yet, a widening domain of literature points to several qualitative characteristics, beyond the conventional attributes of time and cost, considered by transit users when making travel choices ( 2–11 ). In particular, the growth of the economy aided by a mature understanding of the metro system has resulted in increasingly high passenger expectations of attributes such as comfort, travel time reliability, and safety.…”

“…Of the many crowding valuation studies conducted, the majority of the research has relied on stated preference (SP) surveys ( 7 ). Most of the literature reviewed the use of travel time, in-vehicle crowding, and sitting and standing attributes in their SP design ( 3, 5, 9–11, 18, 25 ). However, many surveys have conveyed levels of crowding using different methods.…”

“…However, many surveys have conveyed levels of crowding using different methods. For instance, some studies portrayed in-vehicle conditions of crowding level by using the average number of standing passengers per square meter ( 3, 8–11, 18, 25 ).…”