Public Transit Design for Smart Growth: Using Choice Experiments to Quantify Tradeoff, Values and Funding Implications

摘要

Studying public perception of public transportation and the environment in which it operates is crucial to understanding the symbiotic relationship between transportation and the built environment. This report documents research completed to quantify the value of public transit using choice experiments in the form of stated preference surveys. The study was implemented in two phases; a pilot study and a full scale implementation. The general study methodology for each phase use choice experimentation administered in the form of a stated preference surveys. The choice experiments used in the both studies place respondents into personalized hypothetical scenarios and examine their preferences for new transit service and the environment in which it operates. The survey instrument developed investigates public response in a hypothetical bond referendum, a realistic funding context in todays transportation funding environment. Data obtained was used to develop preference models by fitting them with logit models, which are used to identify tradeoffs users make between various transit service attributes and built environment attributes.