Passengers' perceptions and effects of bus-holding strategy using automatic vehicle location technology

Journal of Advanced Transportation, Fall, 2009 by Shinya Hanaoka, Fayyaz Mahmood Qadir

After modifying questionnaires, survey was conducted onboard by randomly handing out questionnaires to passengers. The questionnaire consisted of 14 questions with three parts: socio-economic information, trip information and passengers' satisfaction and willingness/expectation. The surveyors were available to help passengers if they encountered any difficulty while filling out the questionnaire. To capture real attitudes about AVL system, its characteristics (real-time information of bus schedule, improved safety in travel, punctuality of arrival and departure, announcement of next stop, and timely bus dispatch for better coordination with other bus routes) were described in questionnaire and passengers were asked to rank them according to their own perception and willingness to use such information. Additional questions were asked related to attributes of the performance of existing service (service hours, frequency of service, behavior and service of bus staff, announcement of next stops and value of fare) to gauge their perceived satisfaction levels with the existing bus operation.

The survey was conducted between 0700 and 1800 on weekend, day-1 and on weekday, day-2. The return rates were 80 and 75 percent, and collected 121 and 138 samples, respectively on these two days. The reason for selecting a Saturday was that there is relatively higher traffic than on Sundays.

Waiting-Time Survey

The purpose of waiting-time survey was to observe real-time passenger arrival rates and actual waiting-time for each passenger, at two major bus stops on route #73. In addition, headways were also observed to determine variations and its effect on waiting-times. The weekday waiting-time survey was conducted at the Siam-square bus stop (outbound direction) during morning and evening peaks, and off-peak periods. The weekend waiting-time data was collected at the National Stadium bus stop (inbound direction), during same periods as weekday. The number of passengers using bus stop and clear visibility of whole bus stop through installed video camera were main factors which were considered in selection of bus stops for this survey. This type of data is valuable especially for improving headway performance based on passengers' waiting-time and has been rarely considered for research in evaluations of bus operation in Bangkok.

Results from the Attitudinal Survey

This route is mainly used for work and shopping purposes and majority of respondents used it from 6-7 and 4-5 days a week. It was noted that almost 63 percent of the respondents in all income groups indicated an interest in continuing to use bus transit even if a bus arrives late at stop, which offers some promise for stopping the fall in bus ridership and attracting passengers through the use of advanced technologies in bus transit. It is notable in Figure 1 that taxis are the next popular mode on this route. Passengers are choosing alternate modes or services if buses on route #73 are late, as they have numerous options in taxis, other buses with different destinations along the same route, public motorcycles, tuk-tuks, vans and the underground rail system (known as the MRT). Figure 1 also describes a higher tendency to take a taxi as passengers' monthly household income increases, while the MRT is more popular for those in monthly household income groups of less than 10,000 Baht. According to the collected data, personal cars and walk were nearly negligible to passengers as alternate modes so these both were not included in the analysis.