Examining the influence of stop level infrastructure and built environment on bus ridership in Montreal

Authors

Vincent Chakour
Naveen Eluru

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2016

Subject Area

place - north america, mode - bus, infrastructure - stop, infrastructure - interchange/transfer, land use - planning, operations - scheduling, ridership - elasticity

Keywords

Bus ridership, Composite maximum likelihood, Montreal, Urban form, Boardings and alightings, Time of day

Abstract

We studied transit ridership from the perspective of the transit provider, with the objective of quantifying the influence of transit system operational attributes, transportation system infrastructure attributes and built environment attributes on the disaggregate stop level boardings and alightings by time of day for the bus transit system in the Montreal region. A Composite Marginal Likelihood (CML) based ordered response probit (ORP) model, that simultaneously allows us to incorporate the influence of exogenous variables and potential correlations between boardings and alightings across multiple time periods of the day is employed. Our results indicate that headway affects ridership negatively, while the presence of public transportation around the stop has a positive and significant effect. Moreover, parks, commercial enterprises, and residential area, amongst others, have various effects across the day on boardings and alightings at bus stops. An elasticity analysis provides useful insights. Specifically, we observe that the most effective way to increase ridership is to increase public transport service and accessibility, whereas enhancements to land use have a smaller effect on ridership. The framework from our analysis provides transit agencies a mechanism to study the influence of transit accessibility, transit connectivity, transit schedule alterations (to increase/reduce headway), and land-use pattern changes on ridership.

Rights

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

Comments

Journal of Transport Geography home Page:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09666923

Recommended Citation

Chakour, V. & Eluru, N. (2016). Examining the influence of stop level infrastructure and built environment on bus ridership in Montreal. Journal of Transport Geography, Vol. 51, pp. 205–217.