Understanding the commuters' choice for HOV bus services in the Netherlands

Abstract

The implementation of a bus system is an attractive alternative for decision makers since it has a short lead time and the service can be easily adapted depending on the demand. Due to the flexible nature it allows for the use of fulfilling different magnitudes of demand. Usually bus service provide a lower level quality service, however busses can be configured in such a way that they also provide higher level of service up until a point where they compete with rail systems. In the Netherlands referred to as HOV (“Hoogwaardig Openbaar Vervoer”, high-level public transport). This is a large spectrum with many different configurations. One should still consider the need for a HOV bus service as it comes with extra investment costs compared with the regular bus. Therefore, this research was looking into where there is no difference in valuation between a regular bus line and a higher level of service bus line. Through interviews, analysis of current lines and looking into what decision makers promise as a higher level of service attributes could be defined which could be seen as characteristic for a higher level service bus service. Additionally, the commuters perspective played a important role as most literature mostly considered only the decision makers perspective. A method has been demonstrated which shows how commuter needs can be used as and translated to operational characteristics with which decision makers specify, plan and design current and future higher level of service bus lines. The method includes a MNL model which expresses the valuation of the characteristics attributes of high level bus services which allows for the prediction of the modal split between a bus service and the current commute. This gave insight on which attributes a differently valued between a regular bus and a HOV bus and when a HOV bus service is equally valued as a regular bus service, hence not justifying investments in a higher level service. It was found that in most cases the HOV bus service results in a higher modal split despite of having a lower valuation for most of the characteristic attributes. The commuter seems to have more trust in the reliability promoted by higher level bus services.