Rarely enjoyed? A count data analysis of ridership in Germany's public transport

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2010

Subject Area

place - europe, policy - fares, ridership - drivers, ridership - growth

Keywords

fuel prices, Transit ridership, Pricing policy, Zero-inflated models, Household data

Abstract

Focusing on adult members of German households, this paper investigates the determinants of public transit ridership with the aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices, fares, person-level attributes, and characteristics of the transit system on transport counts over a five-day week. The reliance on individual data raises several conceptual and empirical issues, the most fundamental of which is the large proportion of zero values in transit counts. To accommodate this feature of the data, we employ modeling procedures referred to as zero-inflated models (ZIMs), which order observations into two latent regimes defined by whether the individual never uses public transport. Our estimates reveal fuel prices to have a positive and substantial influence on transit ridership, though there is no evidence for a statistically significant impact of the fare.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Elsevier, copyright remains with them.

Comments

Transport Policy Home Page: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0967070X

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