Modeling public transit route choice behaviour

• Main Author: Zhou, Yao Hui.
• Other Authors: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Civil engineering::Transportation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53829
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This final report discussed about the interrelationship among morning commuters’ objective experience and subjective perception, stated preference and practical behaviour in the presence of overcrowding. By means of site observation and measurement, morning commuters’ real-life experience during the morning peak was quantified and, their travel behaviour was revealed. The two were then compared with commuters’ personal accounts of perceived ridership experience and stated preferences in a survey study. Some of these research findings are briefly decribed below. Through the comparison between the passenger arrival at various stations and the passengers’ stated rating of crowdedness of the platforms, it was inferred that passengers’ perceived crowdedness does not vary linearly with the platform passenger density and their perception of crowdedness was more sensitive when the crowd on-platform was either below 15 people or more than 30. Passengers’ WTP for a seat was obtained from the survey, being at a moderately small average of 42.17 cents or 8.40 minutes per trip. Individual passengers’ WTP was then compared against the crowding disutility they experienced; and it was argued that WTP for comfort was a result of the co-effects of multiple factors including the crowding disutility. The relative influence of the factor of crowding disultility did vary among the rest, when WTP was rendered in varied terms. It was subsequently concluded that morning commuters on the Singapore MRT East West Line from the western region were experiencing overcrowding on their journeys, but the majority of them did not adapt their route or departure time choice as a result of the unpleasant experience in the crowd, because their comfort loss did not easily overcome the concerns over other prevailing factors, like the early arrival schedule cost. On the other hand, possible causes for the bottleneck in service capacity were identified (e.g. train bunching, conflict between alighting and boarding passengers) and in order to address such issues, some suggerstions on management and operation improvement were discussed, which include maintaining headway consistency, implementing flow diversion on platform, educating passengers on cabin etiquette, and introducing flip seats. In the end of the report, recommendations for future studies were also given.