UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECT OF TRANSIT SERVICE RELIABILITY ON WORK-TRAVEL BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Research directed at understanding the impact of transit service reliability on work-travel behavior is described. The research focuses on the impact of service reliability in commuter decisions of modal choice and trip departure time. By working with the hypothesis that service reliability is an important attribute in explaining departure time and modal choice, measures of service reliability (tied in many cases to work-arrival-time considerations) are proposed that capture the impact of service reliability on work-travel decisions. The theory is subsequently tested empirically through the estimation of departure-time and modal-choice models by using data collected in the San Francisco Bay Area. Several interesting results emerged from the research effort. First, arrival-time considerations have an impact on departure-time choice and on modal-choice decisions as well. Second, the arrival-time variables are not highly correlated with existing explanatory variables, which implies that existing travel demand models may not have biased coefficients but will still yield inconsistent forecasts where policy changes alter existing correlations between arrival-time conditions and modal-choice decisions of commuters appear to be interrelated in a way that suggests that the problem should be structured as a nested rather than a joint choice. The implications of these results and research contributions are discussed, and directions for further research are proposed. (Author)

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