More than just a bus ride: The role of perceptions in travel behaviour

Abstract

Chinese

The purpose of this article is to add another dimension to our understanding of travel behaviour by highlighting how individual decisions about travel are simultaneously influenced by both rational, calculable metrics of the transportation system but also by socially constructed, context-specific perceptions that travellers hold about the travel modes themselves. The context for this study is a rapid transformation of the market for intercity buses in the Northeast United States. In the past 15 years, new entrants have transformed a humdrum industry into a dynamic sector of the intercity travel market. The new entrants, curbside buses, have largely shunned traditional bus terminals in favour of picking up and dropping off bus passengers on city streets. Ridership has steadily increased, and these new bus companies have expanded operations throughout the country.

Drawing on a series of focus groups with intercity bus passengers, I describe how two sets of factors drive intercity travellers’ choice to travel onboard the new intercity buses. First, the new companies offer operational and economic advantages. Second, and surprisingly, focus group participants have different perceptions of the new bus companies than the old – and these perceptions appear to be influencing their travel decisions.

Keywords

bus intercity travel mode choice perceptions travel behaviour

Introduction

Why does ridership on transit increase or decrease? Researchers have traditionally conceived of the demand for transit as governed by two sets of factors (Kain and Liu, 1999; Taylor et al., 2009). The first is concerned with the characteristics of the transit service supplied: the cost, travel time, frequency and spatial coverage. The second set of factors are those outside of the control of the transit provider: the regional economy, local geography, land use near stations and so forth. This article adds another dimension by highlighting both rational, calculable metrics of the transportation system described above and the incalculable socially constructed, context-specific perceptions that travellers hold about the travel modes that simultaneously influence individuals’ decisions about travel. To demonstrate these influences, I rely on a series of five focus groups with intercity bus passengers in Philadelphia and New York City.

By describing how participants’ travel decisions were influenced by both traditional technocratic measures of the transportation systems and perceptions that travellers held about the different modes, this work adds to the literature on mode choice, transit ridership and mobilities. This contributes to the view of travel as more than just a derived demand (Jain and Lyons, 2008; Mokhtarian and Salomon, 2001; Ory and Mokhtarian, 2005) and work that foregrounds the social experience of travel (Bissell, 2009, 2010; Jain, 2009, 2011; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Wilson, 2011). Specifically, this work builds on research on the role of perceptions in travel behaviour (Guiver, 2007; Stradling et al., 2007) and the interplay between perceptions and more traditional transportation mode choice metrics (Carreira et al., 2013).

The context for this study is the rapid growth of intercity bus ridership in the Northeast United States after a half century of steadily declining ridership (Schwieterman et al., 2007). At the heart of this turn around are new entrants to the market: curbside bus companies that pick up and drop off passengers on city streets rather than at the traditional bus terminals. Ridership began to increase with the arrival of these buses. From 1998 to 2007, intercity bus ridership between New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, DC (the Northeast Corridor) doubled to over seven million passengers annually, and the market share for legacy carriers that continue to operate in bus terminals, such as Greyhound Bus Lines, decreased from 100 to 40 percent (Greyhound Bus Lines, 2007). In the subsequent years, curbside buses have expanded operations throughout much of the US and their ridership has continued to increase (Schwieterman et al., 2016).

The following section situates the changes occurring in the intercity bus market within research on determinants of transit ridership. Next, I outline the process of data collection. I then describe the focus group findings and close with a discussion of the implications.

Intercity bus and ridership influences

During the second half of the 20th century, the US public came to see intercity buses as a mode of last resort. The number of bus companies, routes and ridership had all increased during the first half of the 20th century, but following the Second World War, intercity travellers increasingly took to the skies and their own cars while intercity bus ridership steadily declined for the remainder of the century (Walsh, 2000). The federal deregulation of the intercity bus industry in the early 1980s did little to stem the tide (Berechman, 1993; Oster and Zorn, 1986). During this waning era, seats onboard intercity buses were disproportionately filled by people who did not own cars, could not drive or could not afford a plane ticket: the poor, the young, the old, minorities and women – people who had no other choice (Meyer et al., 1987; Walsh, 2000).

At the turn of the 21st century, the intercity bus industry suddenly seemed to change and become an acceptable and innovative option for intercity travel. New entrants to the market, curbside buses, brought about these changes. The first category of curbside buses are the so-called ‘Chinatown buses,’ a collection of independent bus companies that began operating between Chinatowns in New York to Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, DC in the late 1990s (Farivar, 2005). The Chinatown buses quickly expanded their ridership beyond a co-ethnic Chinese ridership and were soon operating more departures than the legacy companies (established intercity buses that continue to use bus terminals) between Northeast Cities. In the mid-2000s, a second category of curbside bus company entered the market, ‘corporate curbside buses’. Backed by large multi-national corporations – Megabus is owned by the UK-based Stagecoach Corporation and BoltBus is jointly owned by US-based Greyhound Bus Lines and the Peter Pan Bus Company – these companies have steadily expanded operations to over 100 cities throughout much of the US.

The new entrants’ operational model differs from that of the legacy bus companies. In addition to staging their operations on city streets rather than in bus terminals, the fares offered by the new entrants were initially much cheaper than the legacy companies (more recently, fares on legacy bus companies have become more competitive with curbside companies). Even when they travelled between the same cities, travel times on the new buses were often faster because, unlike legacy companies, they made few or no intermediate stops. Finally, the new bus companies began offering innovative services, like onboard wireless internet, and using yield management techniques to price fares.

Scholars usually frame transit ridership as driven by a combination of internal and external factors (Kain and Liu, 1999; Taylor et al., 2009). The internal factors are those that a transit provider controls while external factors are those outside of their control. External factors, such as the urban spatial structure, land use policies, the regional economic status and social and demographic changes, have a larger effect on aggregate levels of transit ridership than internal factors such as fares and service quantity and quality (Kain and Liu, 1996, 1999; Taylor et al., 2009). However, internal factors can play an important role and among these travel time, speed, frequency and reliability have a greater influence on transit ridership than fares, amenities or safety (Cervero, 1990; Kain and Liu, 1999; Taylor et al., 2009; Wachs, 1976, 1991). Internal factors may play a larger role in ridership levels for intercity travel compared with local travel since long-distance trips are more likely to be discretionary (White, 2009). Thus, decisions about how and when to travel are more sensitive to differences in amenities, travel time and prices across travel options. Existing research on intercity buses to date has attributed the growing ridership to internal factors such as lower fares, frequent and direct service, operations in new neighbourhoods and the adoption of new technology (Schwieterman et al., 2009).

Perceptions about travel modes may also influence ridership. Negative perceptions of buses are often proffered as an explanation for low ridership (Guiver, 2007; Stradling et al., 2007). Experiential or emotional responses to transit combine with more traditional internal factors to shape passengers’ overall experience of transit (Carreira et al., 2013, 2014). The limited research on intercity buses suggests that the experience of travelling onboard a Chinatown bus is a form of cultural tourism for some passengers (Klein and Zitcer, 2012), while passengers travelling on long-distance Greyhound buses mainly try to avoid interacting with each other (Kim, 2012).

Data collection and methodology

As a relatively new phenomenon, I chose to use focus groups to understand how and why intercity travellers make the decision to use intercity buses. I conducted four focus groups in English and one in Mandarin with curbside bus passengers. I held the focus groups in Philadelphia and New York City in the summer and autumn of 2009.

I recruited participants at intercity bus stops in Philadelphia and New York and moderated the English language focus groups with an assistant. For the Mandarin language focus group, I hired a native Mandarin speaking graduate student and used the same focus group protocol. She moderated, transcribed and translated the Mandarin focus group. The discussions had six to nine participants and lasted between 90 and 120 minutes.

After completing all the focus groups and preparing the transcripts, I coded the transcripts using qualitative data analysis software (ATLAS.ti). I used a combination of predefined and inductive codes, which emerged during the coding process (Coffey and Atkinson, 1996; Corbin and Strauss, 2008). After coding the transcripts, I identified themes and concepts, which became the basis for ‘more abstract interpretations of data and theory development’ (Corbin and Strauss, 2008: 54). To protect participants’ confidentiality, I have changed the names of the participants in the following discussion.

In total, 37 people participated in the focus groups: 18 men and 19 women. The median age of participants was 29 (ranging from 20 to 58). Roughly, half were employed full time, almost one-quarter were students, and the remaining participants were working part time, looking for a job or did not answer the question. Nearly one-fifth of the participants’ incomes were below US$25,000 per year, another fifth had incomes between US$25,000 and US$50,000, two-fifths had incomes between US$50,000 and US$100,000 and one-fifth had incomes greater than US$100,000 per year.

The participants in the focus group were experienced intercity travellers. In total, the participants made 875 intercity trips on the Northeast Corridor during the previous year, and the median number of intercity trips was 13. Five participants were regular commuters who travelled one to three times per week between cities, and five participants had only made one round trip in the preceding year. Focus group participants made 36 percent of all their intercity trips on Chinatown buses, 18 percent on corporate curbside buses, 18 percent on Amtrak trains, 16 percent by auto and 1 percent on legacy carriers (participants made the remaining 10 percent of intercity trips on commuter rail between New York City and Philadelphia). Twenty percent of participants had made at least one trip on a legacy carrier in the past year and most indicated during the focus group discussions that they had used a legacy carrier at some point in the past.

There are several limitations to these focus groups. I recruited participants for these focus groups from curbside buses and their experiences may be very different from travellers who rely primarily on rail or other modes of transport. Additionally, only one of the focus groups was with Mandarin speakers and thus I may miss a broader range of experiences of Mandarin speakers along with Cantonese or Fuzhounese speakers. Finally, the intercity bus industry in the study region has changed since these focus groups were completed. In 2012 and 2013, federal regulators shut down many of the Chinatown bus companies used by focus group participants (US Department of Transportation, 2012, 2013). However, Chinatown bus companies continue to thrive, though with some differences. These buses have shifted their operations from primarily connecting major hubs in the Northeast to providing service to second tier cities further afield (Schwieterman et al., 2016). All of these limitations affect the generalisability of the specific perceptions about the buses at the time of the focus groups, but do not negate the fact that perceptions may play a significant role in mode choice.

What influenced mode choice decisions?

The following sections present the findings from the five focus groups. I first describe how a series of internal factors influenced participants’ mode choice. The second part of this section describes how perceptions about different bus companies influenced participants’ decisions.

Internal factors that influenced travel

According to the focus group discussions, cost, travel time, frequency, amenities and safety concerns all influence participants’ decision making about whether to take a curbside bus and which of the curbside bus operators to use. These factors are all the quantifiable aspects of the bus services that fit squarely in the cost-benefit approach of utility maximisation.

Cost

In all the focus groups, participants most frequently cited price as the reason why they patronised curbside buses; one participant succinctly stated, ‘It always comes down to the bucks’ (Kevin, 30s). Others added that buses are ‘the most affordable way to get from point A to point B’ (Roger, 40s) and that ‘taking buses is the cheapest way’ to travel (Claude, 20s). During the discussions, some participants vociferously debated which bus company offered the cheapest tickets, others always patronised the same company and a few priced out all the options for every excursion. Participants’ strong opinions and the debate that the focus groups generated point to the importance of price as a determining factor in their travel decisions.

Participants carefully compared the costs of travelling on curbside buses with competing travel modes. In general, participants preferred taking the bus to driving or to using Amtrak because it was cheaper. It was a simple cost comparison: ‘I was a student, I searched Amtrak and [it] was expensive. When my friend told me that the Chinatown bus only costs 15 dollars, I suddenly turned to the Chinatown bus’ (Matthew, 20s).

Cases where participants did not pay for their own travel reinforced the importance of cost as a determining factor. As one noted, the decision to take a curbside bus ‘depends if cost is a factor’ (Eric, 30s). Participants chose to travel by Amtrak or airplane when price was not a factor, such as when participants’ employers or parents paid for their travel. As one stated, ‘If my work is paying for it, I’m not going to take the bus’ (Joan, 30s). Others echoed these statements. These cases where costs are excluded from the decisions add further weight to the hypothesis that cost is the most important factor.

Other internal factors

Travel time, frequency, amenities and safety concerns also influenced travel decisions. Travel time factored into participants’ decisions about whether to take a curbside bus and about which bus to take in their discussion of travel time from various drop-off points and the likelihood of encountering highway congestion on different days or at different times. One of the innovations is that by avoiding bus terminals, curbside buses can locate in additional city neighbourhoods. These dispersed bus stop locations are a clear benefit for travellers, but create a challenge for urban planners trying to balance the desires of bus operators and patrons with local residents and businesses, many of whom view curbside bus stops as a nuisance.

Other factors were particular to each bus type. The main operational benefit of the Chinatown buses, according to participants, was their frequent departures. As participants noted, ‘That’s the convenience of the Chinatown bus, it comes every 30 minutes’ (Kevin, 30s) and ‘I would just go to Boston’s South Station and see what’s leaving next’ (Emma, 30s). For the corporate curbside buses, the outlets for computers and the onboard wireless internet enabled participants to get work done or just pass the time during the trip. As one participant noted, ‘Because I work [in Philadelphia], and I live in New York, so I can get a lot of work done on the bus before I even get to the office’ (Lewis, 30s). Corporate curbside buses were first among intercity providers to offer onboard outlets and onboard wireless, though it has since become common among many of the intercity bus carriers and, more recently, on Amtrak.

Finally, concerns about safety influenced travel decisions in two distinct ways. First, fear about one’s personal safety at the bus stop influenced travel decisions among many of the female participants, which is consistent with the broader literature on the role that fear plays in the travel behaviour of women (e.g. Loukaitou-Sideris and Fink, 2009). Participants did not agree about whether curbside buses or legacy carriers were safer places to board. However, by locating on the street, rather in the terminal, curbside bus companies are transferring responsibility for the safety of patrons from the terminal operators to city police.

Second, participants in every focus group weighed the operational advantages of curbside buses against concerns about their safety while travelling. These concerns were more common when discussing the Chinatown bus, which some participants avoided altogether because of these concerns. A number of participants described explicit trade-offs between safety and travel time or cost. As one noted, ‘The Chinatown buses, they speed, they drive really crazy … On the one hand I like getting somewhere really fast and so I’ll take the risk but I wouldn’t necessarily put that risk on someone else’ (Emma, 30s). Another described the trade-off they made:

I take it because it’s cheap! If I want to ride safe, I go Greyhound … Do you have the same expectations from the Greyhound driver as you would from the ten-dollar driver [curbside bus]? That’s like saying you have the same expectations from a ten-dollar shoes versus a pair of Vera Wang or Jimmy Choos. I’m not worried about the bathroom, the crazy psychopathic driver. I just get on, get off, get to New York, and have some extra money. So I just pay 10 dollars. (Kevin, 30s)

In the absence of bus crashes, these risks may have seemed acceptable to these passengers. However, after these focus groups were conducted, several Chinatown buses were involved in deadly crashes and were subsequently shut down by federal regulators (US Department of Transportation, 2012, 2013).

Perceptions that influenced travel

Beyond the ‘rational’ choices, operational advantages and safety concerns, participants’ descriptions of the bus companies coalesced into three distinct perceptions. These perceptions are my interpretation of the collective understanding that participants held about the three different types of buses. Notably, I did not include questions about perceptions in the topic guide (see Appendix). Rather, the discussions about perceptions emerged organically during the focus group sessions and only became evident, to me, during my analysis of the transcripts.

Legacy carriers

Most participants in the focus groups had an overwhelmingly negative view of legacy carriers and the bus terminals where they operate. As one participant noted, ‘Greyhound sucks. I have never had a good experience with Greyhound’ (Kara, 30s). Participants characterise these buses and terminals as unsafe, used by drug addicts and the mentally ill. These perspectives are those of focus group participants recruited from curbside bus stops – travellers who already made a choice not to use legacy carriers. However, based on their responses to the questionnaire, one-fifth of the participants had used at least one legacy intercity bus company in the previous year.

One of the main reasons participants claimed they stopped using Greyhound was their distaste for the other Greyhound passengers. As one participant put it, ‘I haven’t taken a Greyhound in a long time and the reason I stopped is that – the people’ (Roy, 40s). Participants complained about bus passengers throwing up or getting in arguments, as well as supposed drug addicts, conspiracy theorists and ‘weird people … who shout at bus drivers, engage in weird ways at the bus stop’ (Greg, 20s).

Focus group participants disliked the bus terminals as well, describing them as dangerous places where they felt uncomfortable and worried for their personal safety and, as a result, they avoided the legacy bus companies that use these terminals. Of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, one participant noted ‘it seems so miserable in there’ (Roy, 40s) and another feared that ‘someone is going to come out with knives and take care of business’ (Roger, 40s). Participants shared similar sentiments about the bus terminals in Philadelphia and Washington, DC. These negative perceptions of the bus terminals factored into participants’ travel decisions not to patronise legacy buses. As one participant noted, she would never use Greyhound because ‘it would require using those two end points,’ i.e. the bus terminals (Sharon, 30s). Notably, participants did not talk in the same manner about the Boston bus terminal (South Station) where all three categories of intercity bus stage their operations.

These depictions of legacy passengers are at odds with the reality of a trip on a legacy bus company, which is likely more ‘mundane’ (Jain, 2009). Focus group participants primarily talked about their dislike of terminals and of other passengers largely ignoring the drivers who, in the author’s experience, are largely courteous and efficient. Recent ethnographic accounts of Greyhound travel demonstrate a disconnect between passengers’ depictions of buses as dangerous and the direct observations of passengers mostly trying to keep to themselves (Kim, 2012). A few participants shared these counter-narratives, describing aspects of the service that they appreciated. In the past 10 years, Greyhound has made a large effort to mimic many of the aspects of the curbside bus and now offers service that is comparable in many ways, albeit picking up and dropping off from within a bus terminal. Regular Greyhound riders are likely aware of these changes, but most participants were not regular legacy bus customers (and not recruited from those stops) and thus, their characterisations are based on past experiences.

Corporate curbside buses

Focus group participants had positive views of corporate curbside buses and repeatedly characterised these buses as ‘professional’. Participants used the word ‘professional’ to capture the corporate ownership of these buses and their presumed reliability and stability, and to characterise the passengers on the buses. One participant described how she got a ‘professional feel’ from the bus company even before boarding the bus. The brightly painted logos covering the sides of the buses, the uniforms that the drivers wear and the orderly boarding process all inspired confidence in focus group participants. She went on to state that the buses are:

professional starting from the fact that it’s easy to buy tickets online and then when you get there, they … It’s cleaner, newer, the people who are driving have uniforms, you can easily tell who your driver is and you can communicate with your driver. (Dena, 20s)

This characterisation of these buses as ‘professional’ echoes the ‘classy coach’ experience described by Jain (2011) and directly challenges the perception of bus travel as being ‘less than’ train travel.

Participants also used the word professional to differentiate the passengers on the curbside buses from other bus passengers. Participants described corporate curbside passengers as ‘professional, all typing on their computers and trying to do things’ (Samuel, 20s) and noted ‘a lot of people are professionals or graduate students’ on the corporate curbside buses (Sharon, 30s). Another participant noted that the corporate curbside passengers did not comport with his idea of intercity bus passengers. He observed ‘a lot of what looked like affluent couples. I was surprised because of my perception of people who ride the bus is more like blue-jeans and all that’ (Travis, 20s).

Focus group participants used the professional designation as a foil to contrast the corporate curbside buses to legacy carriers and the Chinatown buses. Compared with the Chinatown buses, corporate curbside buses ‘just look more professional’ (Lewis, 30s). Participants also used the notion of professionalism when describing the corporate curbside buses’ communication, noting, ‘they had people there directing and making sure people got on the correct bus and it wasn’t like it was willy-nilly’, as the Chinatown buses supposedly are (Eileen, 20s). Furthering this contrast, one participant described the corporate curbside bus companies as ‘real companies’ that were not going to disappear between the time she booked her ticket and when she travelled (Dorothy, 30s).

Finally, participants suggested that corporate curbside buses have broad social acceptability by claiming that these buses are viable options for their parents. As one noted, ‘I’ve had my parents come visit me on the Megabus’ (Joan, 30s). In contrast, no one mentioned their parents when discussing legacy carriers, and references to parents taking the Chinatown buses were more negative. ‘My parents were visiting and I did take them to Chinatown but I wish I hadn’t’ (Megan, 20s), and another said, ‘I took my Mom on the Chinatown bus once and she definitely didn’t like it’ (Emma, 30s).

Chinatown buses

The perception of the Chinatown bus transcends the bus to include the neighbourhood and the culture in which it operates. For participants, the decision to take a Chinatown bus goes beyond considerations of price, frequency and other operational aspects (though these are certainly important) to include an experiential aspect of immersing oneself in an immigrant enclave, however briefly (for more detail, see Klein and Zitcer, 2012). These experiences build on other work demonstrating how culture and identity are shaped through travel onboard local city buses (Wilson, 2011).

For participants in the Mandarin language focus group, part of the appeal of the Chinatown bus was that the buses stage their operations in Chinatowns and that Chinese immigrants operate these buses. Among Mandarin speakers, the fact that the Chinatown bus operates in Chinatown and that the operators are members of the same diaspora is appealing for practical reasons. The shared culture and language made certain aspects of travel easier, and the location in Chinatown provided access to familiar goods and services.

In contrast, participants in the English language focus groups talked about how the Chinatown bus enables them to engage, however briefly or shallowly, with a different culture. For these participants, the Chinatown bus is an exotic adventure, a form of cultural tourism or slumming (Klein and Zitcer, 2012). One participant described how taking the Chinatown bus was different from other buses:

The Chinatown bus is more like a phenomenon … it is not just like a company who said, ‘Oh, we’re just going to transport people from Philly to New York’. It has more to do with that it comes from Chinatown to another Chinatown. That at first it catered to a particular group of people. … I guess since it is more like an experience. It is not like ‘Oh, I am taking a bus or I am taking the train’. It is, ‘I am taking the Chinatown bus!’. (Megan, 20s)

Participants in the English language focus groups also enjoyed buying food in Chinatown before boarding the bus and hearing the driver speaking ‘another language’ (Dena, 20s). Another participant who regularly took the Chinatown bus kept a journal of experiences on the bus:

I kept a little journal for a little while when I first started doing it because you kind of learn a lot about people when riding the Chinatown bus. And the way they interact with people in really close quarters, and also you see so many cultures, all in one place. It is just thousands of different types of people who ride the Chinatown bus, and I really liked that and I liked listening to the different languages. (Emma, 30s)

Perceptions of the Chinatown bus as a form of cultural tourism may not translate to continued ridership. The same participant who kept a journal of her Chinatown bus experiences told us that ‘the charm wore off’ and now she rarely uses these buses (Emma, 30s). Perhaps the combination of a changing ridership and a growing sense that the Chinatown buses may be less safe than competitors could cause participants to be less enamored with the cultural tourism of taking the bus.

Conclusion

When intercity travellers make decisions about how they are going to travel, two very different types of factors enter into their decision making process. First, travellers consider the costs, operational aspects, physical comforts and locational attributes about each mode. Of these, participants emphasised the importance of cost in their choice to take a curbside bus and which type of bus service to use. Their choice to travel by rail or air, when cost was not a factor, underscores the primacy of cost in their decisions. Second, participants’ perceptions about the different buses influenced travel behaviour. They viewed legacy carriers in a negative light, the Chinatown buses as embedded with the immigrant enclave and the corporate curbside buses as ‘professional’.

Perceptions of intercity bus carriers blur the neat categorisation that transportation scholars use to categorise factors that influence transit ridership as either internal or external factors depending on whether they are within the domain of control of the transit provider. The perception of the Chinatown carriers cuts across the internal-external divide. Participants formed these perceptions from the operations and passengers’ assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes about Chinatown and immigrant enclaves. Participants formed their perception of the legacy carriers through both their own experiences and also from the socially constructed history of these bus companies and the terminals in which they operate. Finally, participants’ characterisation of the corporate curbside carriers as ‘professional’ was shaped by the operations of these bus companies but the term was also used in relation to the other bus companies, which were viewed as less than professional.

This interplay of perceptions and internal factors, such as cost, raise the obvious question: to what degree do perceptions play a role in travel decisions? In recent years, scholars have made efforts to include perceptions into quantitative models of mode choice analyses (Bahamonde-Birke et al., 2017; McFadden, 2001). Some perceptions lend themselves to easy integration in these models, such as biased perceptions of travel time or distance (e.g. Fujii et al., 2001; Guo, 2011). Other perceptions, like those described in this article, may prove more difficult to integrate into models. First and foremost, perceptions can only be included in quantitative models to the extent that they are themselves measurable and quantifiable, which is not always the case (Clifton and Handy, 2003; Grosvenor, 2000). Secondly, perceptions about modes are likely contextually and temporally dependent. The perceptions of the Chinatown buses described by these focus group participants are likely outdated since federal regulators shut down most of these companies in 2012 and 2013 due to safety violations.

Given the 50 years of declining ridership of intercity bus travel prior to the turn of the 21st century, the fact that participants in the focus groups have negative perceptions of bus terminals should not be surprising. But what is surprising is that curbside buses have been able to distance themselves from these negative perceptions. Curbside buses stage operations on street corners lacking even the most basic comforts such as seating, restrooms or cover from the elements, yet travellers readily used and recommended these buses over buses that stage in bus terminals.

The creation of a new and different set of perceptions about intercity buses may offer a useful lesson for planners of local public transit operations; perhaps planners and policy-makers too can shift the perception of buses. In many urban contexts, residents’ negative perceptions of local public transit services, particularly buses, are based on past experiences (Guiver, 2007). In many cases, these perceptions may be outdated and not based on the reality of daily travel. This suggests an opportunity for transit planners to realign the perceptions about transit in a more positive light and to increase transit ridership. On the other hand, the example of the intercity bus industry may be a harbinger of looming disruption by private startups in the market for local transit services. What private transit services offer may not be very different from traditional public transit when it comes to their operations. Rather, what they offer is a service that has a different perception, not tainted by the stink of public buses.

For planners and policy-makers, curbside buses offer cause for both celebration and concern. The buses promise an inexpensive path for expanding intercity travel compared with the immense economic costs and political hurdles associated with alternatives – building high-speed rail, airport runway expansions or increasing highway capacity. However, curbside buses have also created new challenges in cities where they operate. As focus group participants discussed, the new low-cost buses have opened up circumstances where travellers are making trade-offs between travelling safely and travelling cheaply. Federal regulators have only recently begun to address this by shutting down some of the operators. In the deregulated environment, the regulators are playing catch up, responding to the rapidly changing market. By creating informal bus depots on city streets, the new entrants have transferred the spillover effects of intercity bus operations to new neighbourhoods. In the era of legacy carriers, the mitigation of these day-to-day problems were the domain of the bus terminal management, but now responsibility has shifted, often falling on the shoulders of city agencies. Concerns about personal safety at the bus stop, discussed by several female focus group participants, offer an example. The responsibility to create an environment where travellers feel safe is now a policing issue. Other problems associated with having an informal bus depot, such as pollution, congestion and other nuisances, are no longer confined to the depot but must be dealt with by a host of new players: local business, community groups and planners.

Footnotes

Appendix

TOPIC GUIDE

Example from Philadelphia

Funding

Funding for the article was received from the Federal Transit Administration, US Department of Transportation.

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