Analysis of intended bus usage

In order to plan bus operations, it is necessary for transit planners to understand what factors may influence travelers' choice of buses for travels within a city. The proposed method involves various scenarios of a hypothetical bus operation which was rated by a group of individuals.Analysis of Covariance technique is employed to analyze people's sensitivities to their perceived levels of bus service characteristics. The technique involves: testing for the significant effects of varying levels of service characteristics upon people's intentions to use bus service, and assessing differences among various population segments in their sensitivity patterns towards bus service characteristics.Results from the application of the technique to attitudinal data collected by the Orange County Transit District indicate that bus service characteristics do influence, independently and jointly, respondents' stated intentions to use buses.Sensitivity pattern differed across the five homogeneous segments identified in an earlier research based on socioeconomic characteristics.One segment (an older, predominatly male population segment with higher home ownership level and lower income than the rest of the sample) was relatively insensitive to changes in bus fare and was influenced by changes in headway independent of changes in access distance. Another segment consisting of fewer registered voters with lower education also exhibited similar independent impact of headway and access distance.The technique is especially useful in reducing a large number of proposed alternative bus systems to a smaller set for further planning considerations by specifying the ranges within which variation of service characteristic would cause substantial changes in the intended usage responses.