Traveler Willingness to Use Flexible Transit Services in China: Case Study of Qilu Software Park

摘要

This paper examines traveler's willingness to use flexible transit services prior to their deployment in Chinese cities. A total of 2,403 samples were collected in Jinan Qilu Software Park (the Park) by a self-reported questionnaire survey, which include three types of questions, namely, questions on demographic information, public transit customer satisfaction, and flexible transit service-related information. Through correlation and spatial analyses of travel characteristics and profiles of potential flexible transit service users, this paper reaches the following research findings: (1) around 60% of the respondents in the Park are willing to use a flexible transit service. Women, enterprise employees, and people with higher education and income levels are more willing to use a flexible transit service; (2) respondents are willing to pay an average fare of 4 Chinese Yuan (0.60 U.S. dollars equivalent) per trip to use a flexible transit service; and (3) respondents express a higher preference (65.5%) for a service that has the fixed-route attribute but with easy-to-access locations for pick-up/drop-off points. In addition, different types of flexible transit services are needed to accommodate specific spatial and temporal travel attributes of users. (C) 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.