Willingness To Use Demand Responsive Transit As Mobility Alternative

This research aims to suggest demand responsive transit(DRT)as a mobility alternative in Karachi,a city of Sindh province of Pakistan.The research is conducted on questionnaire which is based on stated preference(SP)survey with well-designed choice experiments.The choice experiments include data of willingness to use DRT along with other existing alternatives such as carpooling,minibus and private car.DRT was taken as hypothetical alternative.Many researchers use this technique to collect the data of willingness to use/pay.SP survey gives choice of scenarios with multiple attributes and level of those attributes.The attributes considered to describe the selected alternatives are travel time,travel cost,waiting time and cancelation fees.Other variables of data include socio-demographic characteristics and data of awareness or perception of DRT among selected sample.This study briefly described the transportation challenges and existing modes in city in order to understand transportation framework of city.Hypothetical approach is also used for advanced assumptions.This research mainly focuses on choice experiments of working people and students.500 responses were collected from respondents from which 300 were working people and 200 were students.Moreover,it establishes multinomial logit(MNL)model and nested logit(NL)model for analytical results.Carpooling is taken as reference level in this study.The modeling results revealed that working people were more likely to use DRT than students.It is also found that socio demographic variables such as gender,age,monthly income and employment were also significant but varies with working people and students.This study also suggests planning measures which can be beneficial to policy makers to extend DRT network in city.This research is only limited to four transportation modes which are mentioned in questionnaire.This study can be helpful for potential stakeholders of transportation in city.This study could also be helpful for introducing DRT in developing countries.This study can be further extended by detailed research about travel behavior for expansion of DRT in potential market segments of Pakistan.