User preferences and route choice

Abstract

To design a public transport system and effectively be able to promote its use, it is important to understand the traveller’s decision making process, which is based on their preferences and perceptions. This chapter presents an empirical analysis of the problem looking at different variables, both tangible and intangible, that help to explain mode and route choices on a public transport system. It is shown that travellers appear to consider a wide variety of attributes, such as different travel time components, fares, the transfer experience involved, vehicle crowding levels, the network topology, and that they weight these differently according to their socio-economic characteristics.