Characteristics of Premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode (2014) / Chapter Skim
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A-1 A p p e n d i x A Literature and Practice Reviews Contents A-1 Overview A-2 Awareness of Transit Services A-7 Transit Service Attributes A-27 Case Studies of Transit Attribute Evaluations A-38 Applied Models A-52 Transit Agency Interviews A-62 Summary Overview The review of the literature and current practice covered three aspects of transit planning: awareness of transit services, transit service attributes, and how mode choice models incorporate premium transit services. The lack of awareness and familiarity with transit seems to be significant and there is not yet abundant research on this topic.
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A-2 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Practitioners have struggled to quantify these additional service attributes and to measure traveler's reactions to these service attributes. This review highlighted the need for an in-depth study to quantify these additional service attributes and to incorporate them in travel demand forecasting models.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-3 this study lived in an area with readily available transit alternatives, 21% did not know that transit was available (FIGURE A-1)
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A-4 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode While many individuals are unaware of transit in general, determining the differences in awareness between premium and conventional services is of particular importance to this research. Typically, those supporting a positive premium service bias cite the improved quality of non-traditional, more qualitative attributes like comfort and convenience.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-5 the same type as conventional buses, are thoroughly rehabilitated and cleaned for the new service, and are equipped with signal priority and on-board cameras. The buses are also "wrapped" with a brand logo.
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A-6 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode One additional example, the River Line light rail operated by New Jersey TRANSIT, illustrates how the many visible aspects of a new premium rail service can work together to increase ridership (T. Marchwinski, pers.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-7 Transit Service Attributes The attributes explaining mode choice must be identified and appropriately described in order to estimate each mode's market share. Mode choice models typically specify level-ofservice attributes such as travel time, cost, access time, wait time or headway, and transfers.
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A-8 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Traditional Transit Service Attributes Most mode choice models characterize service quality in terms of travel time (in vehicles, walking, waiting, and transferring) and cost (fares, fees at park/ride lots)
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Literature and practice Reviews A-9 TABLE A-1. Transit attributes.
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A-10 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Qualitative and Quantitative Research on Premium Service Attributes The following sections of this appendix present anecdotal accounts and quantitative valuations for a subset of the attributes listed in TABLE A-2. The sections are organized by category, and the attributes described are those most frequently cited in research, those most valued by travelers, and those that transit agencies have some degree of control over.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-11 TABLE A-2. Relative attribute importance.
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A-12 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Journey Time Travel time is an attribute traditionally accounted for in mode choice models and by pathbuilders. However, there are aspects that are not well represented but seem to be important, including reliability and specific design elements that accommodate and give priority to transit vehicles.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-13 variable in the regional model, Global Positioning System speed data were used to relate average peak-period delay to the standard deviation in travel time. Higher average delay resulted in a higher likelihood of extreme delay, and this deviation in delay was used to estimate the 90th percentile travel time and compute the resulting delay.
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A-14 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode between 4 to 10 minutes of travel time. He also found similar results in preference and benefits for fixed-guideway bus rapid transit over on-street bus, suggesting that the technology may be less important than the reliability and service quality provided by a dedicated guideway.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-15 Span of Service. The span of transit service for a particular transit line obviously limits or defines the availability of that service.
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A-16 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Shelter and Seating. While not as highly valued as station and stop cleanliness, shelter and seating are routinely identified and quantified in research.
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Literature and Practice Reviews A-17 Source: Pepper et al., 2003 FIGURE A-8. Importance of scores for on-train attributes.
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A-18 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode As shown in FIGURE A-8, additional layout and seating attributes such as seat material or the increased seating options from a multilevel train were less strongly valued. In September 2008, the CTA conducted two seating configuration studies, the maxcapacity rail car experiment (Chicago Transit Authority 2008a)
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Literature and practice Reviews A-19 TABLE A-4 and TABLE A-5 illustrate the added explanatory power gained from specifying both load factor and seat availability. A train at full capacity (200% load factor)
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A-20 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Other Comfort. As mentioned previously, air conditioning (along with layout and design)
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Literature and Practice Reviews A-21 by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. This study found that the transit share for commute trips was: 42% for trips where both the residence and workplace were within 0.5 mile of a transit stop/station; 28% for trips where the workplace was within 0.5 mile of a transit stop/station but the residence was not; 16% for trips where the residence was within 0.5 mile of a transit stop/station but the workplace was not; and 4% for trips where neither the residence nor workplace were within 0.5 mile of a transit • • • • stop/station.
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A-22 Characteristics of Premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Source: Cervero, 1993 FIGURE A-11. Work trip rail share by distance from workplace to station.
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Literature and Practice Reviews A-23 Source: Shelton and Lo, 2003 FIGURE A-12. Two King County bus transit-oriented developments.
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A-24 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Ease of Boarding. Primarily quantified in bus studies, the ease of boarding can significantly impact a large portion of the traveling population, with wider doorways and groundlevel entry and aisles serving as attractive features on many bus rapid transit services.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-25 FrontRunner commuter rail line to increase the appeal of the service (FIGURE A-14)
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A-26 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode FIGURE A-15. MTA's off-board fare vending machine.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-27 Safety Safety is a significant concern for many transit travelers, particularly personal safety from crime. This can be crime in a parking lot, at a station or stop, or on-board, and the perceived threat of crime increases at night.
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A-28 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode The tables below (TABLE A-8, TABLE A-9, and TABLE A-10) display the percentage of in-vehicle time respondents would accept for a 10% improvement in each attribute rating.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-29 TABLE A-10. (Continued)
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A-30 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode A paper survey was administered to nine service segments -- three bus depots and three route types per depot. These nine segments were treated as individual nests in order to scale coefficients across segments, which allowed direct comparison of coefficient values across segments while also accounting for preference variation between the segments.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-31 Measuring Bus Passenger Preferences Swanson, Ampt, and Jones (1997) A study of various bus transit attributes performed in Britain aimed to carry out a, "...study of willingness to pay for bus service and infrastructure improvements in order to inform the project appraisal process." "The objectives were to identify those service attributes of concern to respondents, meaning those of which they express awareness, how large changes in those attributes need to be for passengers to recognize a difference, and the best way of summarizing and presenting this experience to respondents in a pictorial format." Artist sketches were deemed the best method for displaying service attributes, offering enough context to make the situation representative (e.g., a bus shelter on rural road as opposed to a city street)
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A-32 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Respondents first evaluated attributes from three randomly selected journey stages. Two alternatives were presented -- one sketch matching the respondent's current situation and one sketch of a hypothetical situation -- and respondents provided the direction and magnitude of their preference on a 100 point scale.
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Literature and Practice Reviews A-33 Source: Resource Systems Group, Inc., 2007 FIGURE A-16. NJ Transit MaxDiff conjoint screenshot.
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Source: Resource Systems Group, Inc., 2007 FIGURE A-17. NJ Transit MaxDiff results.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-35 Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches for Studying Transit Stations Spitz, Greene, Adler, and Dallison (2007) The value of individual train station amenities was quantified for ten recently improved NYC train stations.
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A-36 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode to value various interior attributes including seating configuration and seat design, which were directly related to the amount of seated (and standee) capacity that the coaches would provide.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-37 TABLE A-15. (Continued)
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A-38 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode TABLE A-16. (Continued)
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Literature and practice Reviews A-39 service frequency in their choice process since they could elect to travel home in the middle of the day in case of a family emergency. Even if these factors were known with greater certainty, practitioners would struggle to inform their models about these new transit attributes.
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A-40 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode eight case studies and likely is a reflection of the difficulty of quantifying non-traditional attributes and assessing the traveler's reaction to changes in those attributes. Two case studies attempt to relate incremental benefits to specific components of premium modes.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-41 Only one case study focused on a particular attribute. The Lower Manhattan-Jamaica/JFK Transportation Project studied a number of different attributes, including seat type (bench or forward/reverse)
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A-42 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode attributes for bus and premium transit are found to be insufficient. This was the reason in six case studies.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-43 TABLE A-18. Summary of unmeasured attribute credit.
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A-44 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Consequently, the report recommends forecasting base ridership using existing models or elasticity techniques to reflect the impact of improvements to time, frequency, and cost. TCRP Report 118 recommends increasing the estimate of base ridership by up to 25% to account for non-time/cost attributes.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-45 TABLE A-19. Additional ridership impacts of selected BRT components.
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A-46 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Also, the model includes a way to differentiate areas with different levels of walk-totransit accessibility without the need for a constant based on geography or area type. The Pedestrian Environmental Factor (PEF)
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Literature and practice Reviews A-47 Use of the PEF in mode choice is intended to capture the impact of different area types on the likelihood of using transit. The PEF is expressed as a utility variable in the mode choice model.
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A-48 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Charlotte New Starts Travel Demand Model -- Charlotte, North Carolina (Woodford, 2007) The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS)
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Literature and practice Reviews A-49 TABLE A-24. SERPM v6.5 incremental mode-specific constants (equivalent IVTT)
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A-50 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode On the basis of these estimates, seating availability is equivalent to 21.9 and 37.0 minutes of IVTT for 15–30 and 30+ minute commuter rail trips, respectively. If the standard RTFM commuter rail IVTT coefficient is used, seating availability is equivalent to 15.3 and 25.9 minutes.
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Literature and Practice Reviews A-51 Two SP experiments were conducted: (1) inter-mode choice between auto and transit and (2)
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A-52 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Transit Agency Interviews One of the objectives of this research project was to discuss the results of the literature and practice reviews to get direct feedback from staff at transit agencies and MPOs. Two rounds of interviews were conducted by Greg Spitz of Resource Systems Group, Inc., during the summer and early fall of 2008.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-53 There were advertisements at the MAX stations prior to implementation and there were people at each station helping customers for the first few days of operations. The BRT service was branded as "MAX" and wrapped in a logo.
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A-54 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode service, X buses still increased ridership overall in its corridors (including X buses and local bus ridership)
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Literature and practice Reviews A-55 and a small map. Websites, which still continue (http://www.riverline.com/)
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A-56 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode routes (except for one)
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Literature and practice Reviews A-57 half-mile over the previous limited service. All ticketing is done off-board the buses at TVMs at the bus stops.
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A-58 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Greg Spitz, RSG, contacted a number of MPO's and transit agencies based on guidance from the panel and FTA about which agencies would be conducting rider research in the near future.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-59 Dear [Transit Agency] , At the bottom of this email is a summary of the TCRP study we're conducting, Characteristics of Premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode.
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A-60 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Summary Scope of the TCRP H37 Study The purpose of this research is to describe the most important factors that differentiate premium transit services from ordinary bus services, and to quantify for practical use the magnitude of these distinguishing features. A successful research effort will both improve the transit industry's understanding of mode choice determinants and offer practical insights to the forecasting community so that mode choice models and transit path-builders can better represent and distinguish important mode characteristics.
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Literature and practice Reviews A-61 Chicago Pace: Chicago Pace will soon be issuing an RFP for a combined O-D and Customer Satisfaction Study. RSG has been communicating with Pace on this future project and is expected to have good cooperation on adding an email question, if not more questions related to TCRP Project H-37.
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A-62 Characteristics of premium Transit Services that Affect Choice of Mode Summary Based on the findings in the literature review and actions taken in practice, it is clear that typical mode choice model specifications lack important features differentiating transit services and this omission affects the quality of forecasts and our ability to represent the merits of one alternative over another. The fact that creative actions have been taken in practice underscores that this issue is not new by any means, but the increasing variety of techniques to address, to some extent, these shortcomings is encouraging.
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