Smart choices for smart Newcastle transportation

Executive summary of report: 1. Literature review of previous studies on transport choices: Commuters value travel time highly. Lost time is perceived as longer than time gained. Importance of travel time decreases when public transport conditions are comfortable. Car drivers overestimate the travel time by public transport. Inform drivers about precise time. Public transport use increased after short periods of fare-free travel; effects were long-lasting. 2. Analysis of tap-on and tap-off bus ride-data in Newcastle: We mined tap-on/off data from Keolis-Downer, and merged it with weather and census data. Good validity for data merging (data reported in census and actual Opal use data match well). Weather matters: 10% fewer rides on rainy days than on dry days. Time matters: more morning time rides that ended in postcodes with higher density of business. Future investigation could explore geography, transfer rides, socio-economic status, and more. 3. Experimental study: querying Newcastle commuters about their transport preferences via app. Discrete choice experiment: exploring preferences for car vs bus trips in Newcastle. This method bypasses some of the common biases in ordinary surveys. Key attributes driving commuters’ choices were bus fare, waiting time, and parking costs. We identified ‘commuter profiles’ unique to different sub-groups (such as young/old, Male/female).