Commuters’ behavior towards upgraded bus services in Greater Beirut: Implications for greenhouse gas emissions,social welfare and transport policy |
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| Institution: | 1. Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs and the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236 Riad el Solh, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon;2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236 Riad el Solh, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon;3. Department of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236 Riad el Solh, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon;4. Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, American University of Beirut, P.O. Box 11-0236 Riad el Solh, Beirut 1107-2020, Lebanon;1. School of Transportation, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430063, China;2. School of Economics, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou 014010, China;3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;4. Ingram School of Engineering, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA;5. Department of Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;1. Department of Transport Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden;2. Centre for Economic Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium;3. Laboratoire d’Economie des Transports, CNRS, Université de Lyon, France;4. Centre for Regional Science, Umeå University, Sweden;5. Centre for Transport Studies (CTS), KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden;1. Social Psychology Department, UNED, Spain;2. Transport Research Centre, TRANSyT-UPM, Spain;1. Department of Urban Management, Kyoto University, Japan;2. Department of Engineering, Ajou University, Republic of Korea |
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| Abstract: | Climate change is one of the most critical environmental challenges faced in the world today. The transportation sector alone contributes to 22% of carbon emissions, of which 80% are contributed by road transportation. In this paper we investigate the potential private car greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction and social welfare gains resulting from upgrading the bus service in the Greater Beirut Area. To this end, a stated preference (SP) survey on mode switching from private car to bus was conducted in this area and analyzed by means of a mixed logit model. We then used the model outputs to simulate aggregate switching behavior in the study area and the attendant welfare and environmental gains and private car GHG emissions reductions under various alternative scenarios of bus service upgrade. We recommend a bundle of realistic bus service improvements in the short term that will result in a reasonable shift to buses and measurable reduction in private car emissions. We argue that such improvements will need to be comprehensive in scope and include both improvements in bus level of service attributes (access/egress time, headway, in-vehicle travel time, and number of transfers) and the provision of amenities, including air-conditioning and Wi-Fi. Moreover, such a service needs to be cheaply priced to achieve reasonably high levels of switching behavior. With a comprehensively overhauled bus service, one would expect that bus ridership would increase for commuting purposes at first, and once the habit for it is formed, for travel purposes other than commuting, hence dramatically broadening the scope of private car GHG emissions reduction. This said, this study demonstrates the limits of focused sectorial policies in targeting and reducing private car GHG emissions, and highlights the need for combining behavioral interventions with other measures, most notably technological innovations, in order for the contribution of this sector to GHG emissions mitigation to be sizable. |
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| Keywords: | Choice experiment Commuter behavior Greenhouse gas emissions Mode switching Public transport policy Upgraded bus service |
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