Two-stage choice-based demand model for rural feeder service to the bus stop

ABSTRACT

The paper documents an experience of developing a demand model for alternatives with dissimilar attributes in the context of transportation services. The work is demonstrated with reference to feeder service to the bus stop in rural India, where the attributes and physical levels of hypothetical feeder service and presently used modes, namely bicycle, and motorcycles, are highly dissimilar. A two-stage approach was adopted in which the first stage analysis included the development of an RPL model to obtain the WTP values of hypothetical feeder service. At this stage, only the attributes of various hypothetical feeder services were considered which were similar in nature. In the second stage, the number of variables describing the hypothetical feeder service was reduced judiciously using the knowledge obtained from stage I analysis and demand models were developed for two user groups, namely bicycle users and motorcycle users. The results indicate the need for improvement of qualitative attributes of feeder service, which are often neglected in emerging countries such as India. Although the results presented in the paper are case-specific, the experiences documented in this paper are expected to encourage transportation planners to follow a similar approach while developing demand models involving dissimilar alternatives.

KEYWORDS:

• Demand models
• dissimilar attributes
• willingness-to-pay
• rural feeder service

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.