User Behavior in Multiroute Bus Corridors

Multiroute corridors are a common feature of bus networks. In these corridors, passengers select a route from a set of parallel routes that serve the desired destinations. Understanding how passengers make these decisions can help measure passenger experience and inform network and service planning. A web-based survey was used to collect information on users of a multiroute corridor in London that includes both local and limited-stop bus service. The survey was used both as a tool to understand behavior and as a demonstration case for the viability of web-based surveys, a relatively new methodology for data collection on public transport user behavior. The representativeness and the accuracy of the survey responses were analyzed. The results revealed that online surveys could collect detailed information from a large, fairly representative sample of bus passengers. The responses to questions in the survey were used to categorize passenger behavior by route choice strategy. Passengers could either wait for a bus of a specific route or take the first bus to arrive that serves their destination. The survey data showed that passengers’ route choice strategies were influenced by several factors, including trip length, trip purpose, passenger income, use of countdown next-bus information, passenger attitudes toward crowding, and levels of risk aversion.