Key Factors Influencing Public Transport Ridership
Growing Transit Needs
The global population is quickly growing and more people are moving into urban areas searching for more opportunities. In 2000, the global population was approximately 4.4 billion and by 2024 the number reached, approximately, 8.1 billion. According to the United Nations, by 2030, over 60% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas.
Just like the population, urbanization is quickly accelerating, and just like the cities, the streets will quickly get crowded.
This adds a huge strain on the mass transit system, which calls for a more efficient and sustainable transportation system, but more often than not, public transport in developing countries has to deal with low ridership challenges that need to be addressed.
Having a good understanding of the factors influencing public transport ridership is a crucial step towards achieving an efficient public transport network.
Here we’ll explore a list of possible key factors that can have an impact on how your city’s transit system performs.
These factors are often organized into External and Internal. External factors are outside of the control of the system and its managers, things such as levels of employment of the operating area or even its population. Internal factors are the ones over which the transit managers have some degree of control, such as scheduling, ticket pricing and service levels.
These factors are not completely unrelated, since, for example, external factors can impact internal ones. An event happening in a certain region could bring in more people and, thus, call for an increase in service levels.
External FACTORS IMPACTING TRANSIT RIDERSHIP
Socio-economic factors
- Factors such as income and employment status have a direct impact on the use of public transport. Areas with higher levels of employment explain the reasoning behind higher percentages of public transport use.
- Multiple studies indicate that there is a significant presence of students and private sector employees in public transport as part of their daily commute. Lower income individuals and those without personal vehicles also have a higher probability of relying on public transport. On the other hand, individuals with higher incomes and personal vehicles use public transport less frequently. Access to private vehicles largely determines transit services demand, since public transport is, generally speaking, seen as an “inferior good” to owning a car.
Public Perception
- The public’s perception on public transport can also impact ridership levels. If people don’t deem public transport as safe and reliable then they’ll likely avoid these services.
Governmental Factors
- Things such as government subsidies for public transport and financial incentives for users can boost ridership. The level of public funding for a transit service can be indicative of a higher or lower demand and can also reflect the economic vitality of said service. Some areas might have higher public funding, meaning that they have a greater demand than the ones with lower funding.
- Parking policies can directly impact the probability of people making use of public transport services through parking fees and lower parking availability in urban areas. On top of this, infrastructure that incentivises and supports cycling and walking enhances public transport accessibility.
Weather
- Certain weather changes can have an impact on public transit. Whilst this is not a strong impacting factor, it’s interesting to analyze changes in travel behavior based on this external factor. Studies reveal that certain extreme weather conditions, such as rainfall and wind, can explain a certain level of loss in ridership. What is interesting is that this can have a certain level of influence over the choice of mode of transportation passengers will pick for their trave.
Whilst public transport operators don’t have a direct control over such factors, it’s important to have a good understanding of their impact in the area of service for efficient and effective planning.
INTERNAL FACTORS IMPACTING TRANSIT RIDERSHIP
Pricing Factors
As discussed previously, socio-economic factors are quite impacting when it comes to the use of public transport. Consequently, pricing would be an obvious and significant element of transit ridership. When it comes to fares, operators can significantly increase ridership through pricing strategies that implement certain discounts and promotions but, although this is an important factor, it is not seen as the most impacting one. Certain passengers don’t mind paying a bit extra for more time efficient vehicles.
Other factors could also impact the performance of pricing strategies, such as safety. In extreme cases, if passengers don’t feel safe, even if tickets have a very low price, many will avoid using public transport.
This reveals that price elasticity could vary drastically depending on various details, such as transit dependency, type of travel (commute or leisure) and ease of access to private vehicles.
Service Quality Factors
Quality can be a subjective matter, but there are multiple elements that can help give a better indication on what service quality can be seen as. Some of them are safety, service frequency and coverage, reliability, comfort and connectivity. Some of these elements could have a higher impact on transit ridership than fares. This means that improvements in service quality and supply can be more important in determining ridership than prices. There are many ways in which you can view and analyze these factors. We’ll show you some of these through our software:
Service frequency and coverage
- A high service frequency and an adequate service coverage of the population has a high impact on public transport ridership.The problem is in knowing how to keep the service efficient and effective. There are multiple ways of going over this. An example would be to know which trips have Overload and Low-ridership issues and adapting accordingly. In the following example we can see that out of 6 journeys, 5 of them had low-ridership issues:
With this information at hand, we could analyze our scheduling, the amount of passengers per journey and, possibly make changes that would make better use of available resources whilst keeping passengers’ needs satisfied:
- When it comes to coverage, we could analyze different areas’ transport supply and demand in order to get an understanding on the possibility of delivering an efficient and effective service to uncovered populations either by developing new lines or by making use of other mobility options as a means to bridge the gap between the population and public transport stops:
Comfort and reliability
Comfort can be linked to elements such as seating availability and vehicle cleanliness. These have a direct impact on customer satisfaction and, consequently, on ridership levels. If public transport isn’t always overloaded and is kept clean, passengers will travel more comfortably. On top of this, reliability and punctuality are important considerations, and operators should aim for perfection when it comes to these elements.
In the example below, we can see that journeys that go for long periods of times with overload issues, have a higher impact on passenger comfort:
Connectivity
Comfort can be linked to elements such as seating availability and vehicle cleanliness. These have a direct impact on customer satisfaction and, consequently, on ridership levels. If public transport isn’t always overloaded and is kept clean, passengers will travel more comfortably. On top of this, reliability and punctuality are important considerations, and operators should aim for perfection when it comes to these elements.
In the example below, we can see that journeys that go for long periods of times with overload issues, have a higher impact on passenger comfort:
Accessibility
- Public transport accessibility is a key point when it comes to the service’s use. If people can’t access the network easily, then the probability of them using it is quite low. It has been shown that if people are a walk away from public transport stops, there is a high chance of them using it and, if not, there should be an alternative way of them getting access to the network. Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) can be used as a means of bridging the gap between public transport stops and passengers.
- In the following example, we can see the area where the population has access to a bus stop within a 5-minute walk (shown in green) and the distance, in minutes, a DRT system would cover once implemented (shown in blue), as a means to bridge the gap between travelers and the public transport system:
Here we can clearly see that, although the network is quite accessible, there are multiple opportunities to expand the public transport system’s reach to a larger portion of the population through DRT.
In Conclusion
Taking on the challenges of low public transport ridership requires a clear understanding of both external factors like demographics, and internal factors such as service quality and pricing. While not all elements are controllable, transit operators can enhance frequency, coverage, and pricing to better serve growing urban populations. At the same time, having a good understanding of possible changes to the external factors can give a better context and understanding of their impacts on public transport services.
As urbanization accelerates, public transport systems must evolve to remain accessible, reliable, and efficient. By prioritizing user experience and leveraging data-driven insights, operators can increase ridership, ease congestion, and support sustainable city living for future generations.
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