Changing roles and new perspectives: towards market orientation in public transport

The general international trend of increasingly subjecting the public transport industry to market principles has been concretized via various developments in many countries. In line with this trend, there is an increased interest in public procurement processes as a model for public service delivery. Sweden is one of the leading countries where public procurement is the prevailing model for delivering public services. In accordance with the general trend, efforts have been made to make Sweden’s public transport more sensitive to passenger needs, and to stimulate a competitive public transport system. For instance, a new Act, which came into effect on 1 January 2012, is aimed at fostering a customer-centric public transport system, with increased role clarity for the public transport actors. Since market-oriented strategies and public procurement processes are both receiving increased interest from the public transport industry, the market orientation of both public authorities and service providers in Sweden’s public transport has been studied. Since market orientation is a process of change, a longitudinal approach was whereby the first study was conducted in the spring of 2011 and the second in the spring of 2014. All of Sweden’s public transport authorities and the service providers that they stated as their major contract holders were asked to participate. In total, 184 respondents participated in the studies. The findings show that the industry as a whole has increased its organizational and inter-organizational efforts to both acquire knowledge of and respond to passenger needs. In particular, the public service providers have increased their involvement in market-oriented activities.     

What influences satisfaction and loyalty in public transport? A review of the literature

Public transport ridership retention is a challenge for many cities. To develop comprehensive strategies aimed at retaining riders, it is necessary to understand the aspects of public transport that influence users to become loyal to the system. This paper analyses relevant literature regarding the causes of satisfaction and loyalty in public transport. We find that the service factors most associated with satisfaction are on-board cleanliness and comfort, courteous and helpful behaviour from operators, safety, as well as punctuality and frequency of service. On the other hand, loyalty is associated with users’ perceptions of value-for-money, on-board safety and cleanliness, interactions with personnel and the image and commitment to public transport that users feels. Furthermore, the results elucidate that the concept of loyalty is best defined based on users’ intentions to continue using the service, their willingness to recommend it to others, their overall satisfaction, but also and most importantly, their image of and involvement with public transport. Public transport users who have a positive image of the agency and consider public transport an integral component of city life are more likely to demonstrate loyalty and act like ambassadors for public transport agencies.     

Book Review: Airline Marketing and Management

Abstract

Public transport policy in the Madrid Metropolitan Area is often deemed as a success. In 1985, an important reform was carried out in order to create a new administrative authority to coordinate all public transport modes and establish a single fare for all of them. This reform prompted a huge growth in public transport usage, even though it reduced the funding coverage ratio of the transport system. Since then, Madrid’s public transport system has been undergoing an increasing level of subsidization, which might jeopardize the financial viability of the city public transport system in the future. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the evolution of the public transport funding policy in Madrid in recent years. We found that the increasing level of subsidy can hardly be explained on the basis of equity issues. Moreover, we claim that there is still room for a funding policy that makes the efficiency of the system compatible with its financial sustainability.     

The role of paratransit: some reflections based on the experience of residents’ coach services in Hong Kong

Paratransit refers to urban transport services “somewhere between private passenger transport and conventional public transport in terms of cost and quality of service” [Rimmer (1980), Paratransit: A commentary. Environ. Plan. A 12, 937–944]. Since the 1980s, a new form of paratransit—residents’ coach, which provides exclusive transport services to residents living in private housing estates—has emerged in Hong Kong. What was the background underlying the emergence and subsequent growth of residents’ coach services? Also, what was the role of residents’ coach in the public transport system of Hong Kong? With the completion of more railway extensions, should residents’ coach services be replaced? If so, what are the potential impacts on people’s life? This paper addresses the above research questions through a large-scale questionnaire survey that examined not only people’s modal choice but also their residential choice, socio-economic background and attitudes. The findings suggest that transport policy makers should pay more attention to examine new forms of paratransit and the ways of integrating them into the overall public transport system, both spatially and temporally. It is only through the development of an efficient and multi-modal transport system can the maximum potential of paratransit in filling the transport gap between conventional mass transit and private cars be realized.     

Efficient contracting and incentive agreements between regulators and bus operators: The influence of risk preferences of contracting agents on contract choice

Contracts that govern transactions between regulators and operators are an important feature of service delivery in public transport. This paper reviews the literature on efficient contracting in general and its application to public transport contracts and found little empirical evidence on the influence of risk preferences of contracting agents on contract choice, a fundamental premise of classical contracting theory. Departing from the existing literature, this paper develops a choice experiment to study public transport operators’ preferences for different contractual forms. People involved in the public transport industry across Australia are invited to do the survey but the respondents are mainly bus operators in New South Wales. The respondents are offered two hypothetical contracts with different risk profiles and incentives and asked to indicate their preferences as well as their acceptance to provide the services under the contract they prefer. A non-linear scaled multinomial logit model is estimated to establish the role of risk allocation on contract preference of bus operators and the optimal amount of risks and incentives, conditioned on the operators’ attitude towards risk. The results help authorities design performance-based contracts to obtain their objectives while maintaining the operators’ level of satisfaction.     

Urban public transport in Europe: Technology diffusion and market organisation

Technological change and incremental technology, at various levels, are believed to have played an important role in the success of urban public transport in Europe. In this paper, a historical overview of the evolution of different transport modes across different European cities is presented. Our major concern is with the processes of diffusion of urban transport modes in European cities and, in particular, with the factors, mainly of an economic nature, that may explain their rates of adoption across Europe. Among these factors, special attention is given to the role played by the dimension and organisation of public transport markets in the rates of adoption of different public transport modes. The main conclusion of the paper is that the success of the introduction of a new transport mode appeared to be mainly related to its ability to provide cheaper and more reliable transport services compared with previous transport modes, and that, in the case of the electric tram, this was achieved by transforming of the structure of the market relating to this urban transport mode into monopolies.     

The perception of Bus Rapid Transit: a passenger survey from Beijing Southern Axis BRT Line 1

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has emerged as a cost-effective transport system for urban mobility. As a relatively new form of Mass Transit, its ability to provide a high-quality transport service and potential to stimulate land development remain largely unexplored. This study intends to investigate the public attitude towards BRT services, as well as respondents’ perception of living near BRT stations, using the Beijing Southern Axis BRT system as a case study. A data-set of responses to 525 questionnaires were assembled and analysed using a combination of statistical techniques. The results show that BRT has gained great popularity among passengers, and brought about a positive impact on the attractiveness of residential property. The data identify that the majority of passengers are work-related commuters and use BRT more than once a day. The captive users have a higher satisfaction than choice users with respect to reliability, comfort & cleanliness and overall satisfaction with the BRT service. It is argued that the BRT has significantly improved the attractiveness of residential property along the BRT corridor.     

The influence of parents’ travel patterns,perceptions and residential self-selectivity to their children travel mode shares

Using the UK National Travel Survey from 2002 to 2006, this paper investigates the influence of households’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions on accessibilities and their travel patterns on their children daily travel mode share. In doing this, this study introduces a model structure that represents the complex interactions between the parents’ travel patterns, their perceptions on public transport services and their reported residential self-selectivity reasons and the children travel mode shares. This structure is analysed with structural equation modelling. The model estimation results show that parents’ residential self-selectivity, parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on accessibilities and their daily travel patterns significantly influence the children’s daily travel mode shares. However, the effects are not uniform across household members. This study has revealed that households’ residential self-selectivity behaviours have more correlations with the children’s non-motorised mode shares, whilst the parents’ perceptions and satisfactions on transport infrastructure and public transport service qualities have more correlations with parents’ mode shares. The results also confirm that parents’ non-motorised modes use in travelling is highly correlated with the children’s physically active travel mode shares. However, at the same time, the results also show that the effects of mothers’ car use to the children travel mode shares is more apparent than fathers’.     

The limits of analyzing service quality data in public transport

In recent years, management and academics have increasingly focused on quality management in public transport. In particular, many public transport operators regularly monitor their service quality over time and use these data to assess quality performance (e.g., for performance-based quality contracts) and to determine managerial decisions (e.g., budget allocations for service improvements). However, despite the widespread applications of service quality data in practice, it is unclear whether cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data provide valid insights for quality management purposes. In this study, we investigate the usability of cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data by conducting an empirical study that tracked a panel’s perceptions of the service quality of public transport and its choice over the course of three consecutive years. The results demonstrate that cross-sectional analyses provide valid insights for quality management. However, cross-temporal comparisons should be interpreted carefully because the results of these comparisons are surprisingly unreliable. In fact, we find that service quality data do not provide reliable results over time and therefore conclude that cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data must be interpreted with caution for quality management in public transport.     

Public transport demand: dynamic panel model analysis

This paper presents an original essay that explains the mobility behaviour towards the public transport supply in Tunisia. This research aims to determine the key variables affecting an individual’s decision to travel by public transport and explains how the use of these means fits the mobility strategies. The dynamic panel model is applied to twelve Tunisian Regional companies, where we aim to analyze the behaviours of Tunisian citizens in the regions where Regional Transport Companies ensure the total service supply of urban, interurban and suburban public transport of travellers. The results show that mobility behaviours are subject to various variables. In particular, service quality, mean price and active population are the most significant variables regarding public transport demand in Tunisia.     

Contribution to the design of the Athletes Bus Network during the Athens 2004 Olympic Games

This paper describes important aspects of the design of the Athletes transportation system for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. The unique characteristics of this network include the close dependence of the vehicle schedules on the competition and training program, the requirement for 100% service reliability, as well as the requirement for full system monitoring and control. In this paper we present methods for the development of service specifications, estimation of the bus fleet size, the design of the network’s organization and management system, and corresponding critical implementation issues. All these issues are relevant to the design and management of bus transport systems for large events.     

A systematic analysis of multimodal transport systems with road space distribution and responsive bus service

A smart design of transport systems involves efficient use and allocation of the limited urban road capacity in the multimodal environment. This paper intends to understand the system-wide effect of dividing the road space to the private and public transport modes and how the public transport service provider responds to the space changes. To this end, the bimodal dynamic user equilibrium is formulated for separated road space. The Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) model is employed to depict the dynamics of the automobile traffic for its state-dependent feature, its inclusion of hypercongestion, and its advantage of capturing network topology. The delay of a bus trip depends on the running speed which is in turn affected by bus lane capacity and ridership. Within the proposed bimodal framework, the steady-state equilibrium traffic characteristics and the optimal bus fare and service frequency are analytically derived. The counter-intuitive properties of traffic condition, modal split, and behavior of bus operator in the hypercongestion are identified. To understand the interaction between the transport authority (for system benefit maximization) and the bus operator (for its own benefit maximization), we examine how the bus operator responds to space changes and how the system benefit is influenced with the road space allocation. With responsive bus service, the condition, under which expanding bus lane capacity is beneficial to the system as a whole, has been analytically established. Then the model is applied to the dynamic framework where the space allocation changes with varying demand and demand-responsive bus service. We compare the optimal bus services under different economic objectives, evaluate the system performance of the bimodal network, and explore the dynamic space allocation strategy for the sake of social welfare maximization.     

Land Transport Policy and Public Transport in Singapore

Singapore has a sophisticated and efficient system of land transport to serve a growing demand for transportation. Constrained by limited space, a comprehensive set of land transport policies has been in place to balance the growth in transport demand and the effectiveness and efficiency of the land transport system. A multi-pronged approach has been used to achieve the objective of a world-class transportation system. These include integration of urban and transport planning, expansion of the road network and improvement of the transport infrastructure, harnessing the latest technology in network and traffic management, managing vehicle ownership and usage, and improvement and regulations of public transport (Ministry of Transport (MOT) (2003) Policy and Regulations, Land Transport, Available: www.mot.gov.sg, Date of Access: 15 September 2003). Singapore was the first country in the world to introduce various new techniques, notably the Area License Scheme (ALS) in 1975 and the Vehicle Quota System (VQS) in 1990. An Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system replaced the ALS in 1998 to take the role of congestion management, the experience of which has also drawn particular attention from many large cities in the world. In 2003, the world’s first and only fully automatic heavy rail Mass Rapid Transit system was opened to the public, marking a new chapter in Singapore’s innovative approach to solving its land transport problem. This paper reviews the land transport policy implemented in Singapore and pays special emphasis to its public transportation systems.     

Development of commuter and non-commuter mode choice models for the assessment of new public transport infrastructure projects: A case study

This paper uses state of the art stated choice designs to parameterise modal choice models for commuting and non-commuting travel futures in the presence of new public transport infrastructure (variations of new heavy rail, light rail and dedicated busway systems). D-optimal choice experiments are developed for a set of labelled modal alternatives in which respondents establish a reference benchmark based on the existing service levels (for access, linehaul and egress trip legs) which is used in a computer aided personal interview instrument to generate future scenarios of service levels for current and prospective new modals options. We show that a fully integrated stated choice experiment provides all the information required to obtain behaviourally relevant parameter estimates (within a nested logit framework) for all but the mode-specific constants (MSCs). The MSCs can be calibrated for the current modes within a network model setting, giving the transport planner an appropriate model for predicting the patronage potential for proposed new public transport infrastructure services. A useful by-product is a new set of behavioural values of travel time savings for access, egress, linehaul and wait times.     

Modeling the interaction between buses,passengers and cars on a bus route using a multi-agent system

This paper models part of a public transport network (PTN), specifically, a bus route, as a small-size multi-agent system (MAS). The proposed approach is applied to a case study considering a ‘real world’ bus line within the PTN in Auckland, New Zealand. The MAS-based analysis uses modeling and simulation to examine the characteristics of the observed system – autonomous agents interacting with one another – under different scenarios, considering bus capacity and frequency of service for existing and projected public transport (PT) demand. A simulation model of a bus route is developed, calibrated and validated. Several results are attained, such as when the PT passenger load is not close to bus capacity, this load has no effect on average passenger waiting time at bus stops. The model proposed can be useful to practitioners as a tool to model the interaction between buses and other agents.     

Validating and improving public transport origin–destination estimation algorithm using smart card fare data

Smart card data are increasingly used for transit network planning, passengers’ behaviour analysis and network demand forecasting. Public transport origin–destination (O–D) estimation is a significant product of processing smart card data. In recent years, various O–D estimation methods using the trip-chaining approach have attracted much attention from both researchers and practitioners. However, the validity of these estimation methods has not been extensively investigated. This is mainly because these datasets usually lack data about passengers’ alighting, as passengers are often required to tap their smart cards only when boarding a public transport service. Thus, this paper has two main objectives. First, the paper reports on the implementation and validation of the existing O–D estimation method using the unique smart card dataset of the South-East Queensland public transport network which includes data on both boarding stops and alighting stops. Second, the paper improves the O–D estimation algorithm and empirically examines these improvements, relying on this unique dataset. The evaluation of the last destination assumption of the trip-chaining method shows a significant negative impact on the matching results of the differences between actual boarding/alighting times and the public transport schedules. The proposed changes to the algorithm improve the average distance between the actual and estimated alighting stops, as this distance is reduced from 806 m using the original algorithm to 530 m after applying the suggested improvements.     

Policy analysis of third party electronic coupons for public transit fares

Mobile technologies are generating new business models for urban transport systems, as is evident from recent startups cropping up from the private sector. Public transport systems can make more use of mobile technologies than just for measuring system performance, improving boarding times, or for analyzing travel patterns. A new transaction model is proposed for public transport systems where travelers are allowed to pre-book their fares and trade that demand information to private firms. In this public-private partnership model, fare revenue management is outsourced to third party private firms such as big box retail or large planned events (such as sports stadiums and theme parks), who can issue electronic coupons to travelers to subsidize their fares. This e-coupon pricing model is analyzed using marginal cost theory for the transit service and shown to be quite effective for monopolistic coupon rights, particularly for demand responsive transit systems that feature high cost fares, non-commute travel purposes, and a closed access system with existing pre-booking requirements. However, oligopolistic scenarios analyzed using game theory and network economics suggest that public transport agencies need to take extreme care in planning and implementing such a policy. Otherwise, they risk pushing an equivalent tax on private firms or disrupting the urban economy and real estate values while increasing ridership.     

Competition in multi-modal transport networks: A dynamic approach

We analyze the behavior of market participants in a multi-modal commuter network, where roads are not priced, but public transport has a usage fee, which is set while taking the effects on the roads into account. In particular, we analyze the difference between markets with a monopolistic public transport operator, which operates all public transport links, and markets in which separate operators own each public transport link. To do so, we consider a simple dynamic transport network consisting of two serial segments and two parallel congestible modes of transport. We obtain a reduced form of the public transport operator’s optimal fare setting problem and show that, even if the total travel demand is inelastic, serial Bertrand–Nash competition on the public transport links leads to different fares than a serial monopoly; a result not observed in a static model. This results from the fact that trip timing decisions, and therefore the generalized prices of all commuters, are influenced by all fares in the network. We then use numerical simulations to show that, contrary to the results obtained in classic studies on vertical competition, monopolistic fares are not always lower than duopolistic fares; the opposite can also occur. We also explore how different parameters influence the price differential, and how this affects welfare.     

Shared taxis: modelling the choice of a paratransit mode in Santiago de Chile

The shared taxi is a special public transport mode, typical of Chilean cities. It operates with cars offering a maximum capacity of four seats, a predefined coverage area and a route that is fixed in principle, but can be adapted to meet passengers’ needs. During a normal day in Santiago, almost 700,000 trips use shared taxis during one of their stages. This represents about 4% of the total trips made in the city, and this modal share increases in zones and periods with low Metro and bus coverage. This study is a first attempt at studying shared taxis as a relevant transport alternative, analysing its main attributes and modelling its demand. With this purpose, after an analysis of the network and its operation, a revealed preference survey (including perceptual indicators) was applied to public transport users in Santiago who had shared taxi as a feasible alternative. Results show a positive evaluation of the mode’s unique attributes, such as the possibility of travelling seated, reducing transfers and alighting at a convenient destination. The subjective valuation of the attributes derived from the models confirm the strong penalty assigned by Chilean users to alternatives implying transfers or increased walking times. The analysis also shows that studying the characteristics of shared taxi users is relevant in a discussion about its regulation and modernization, considering that, while it is desirable to preserve its positive attributes, this should be done in a context of efficient integration with the rest of the transport system.

     

Promoting Public Transport Using Marketing Techniques in Mobility Management and Verifying their Quantitative Effects

Mobility management (MM) is a transportation management policy that uses “soft” measures to attempt to reduce car use and promote sustainable transportation modes such as public transport, bicycles, and walking. Using communication and other means, MM induces voluntarily change towards more sustainable transportation modes. We implemented MM marketing to promote an experimental community bus service. This project had two components: a questionnaire conducted in the service area and a monthly newsletter. The questionnaire was more than a survey; it also communicated information about the bus and helped promote bus use. One month after the survey, we implemented a follow-up survey targeting the initial survey respondents. Results suggest that the MM program produced a general increase in bus use, as well as mouth-to-mouth advertising, that helped promote bus use.