IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i11p8921-d1161475.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

University Bus Services: Responding to Students’ Travel Demands?

Author

Listed:
  • Navid Nadimi

    (Faculty of Engineering, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman 76169-13439, Iran)

  • Aliakbar Zamzam

    (Faculty of Engineering, Shahid Bahonar University, Kerman 76169-13439, Iran)

  • Todd Litman

    (Victoria Transport Policy Institute, 1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC V8V 3R7, Canada)

Abstract

University bus services provide fixed-route public transport for students to and from large universities. They are relatively affordable and resource-efficient, but must compete against private cars and taxis which tend to be more convenient and flexible than University bus services. Many students, particularly those with lower incomes, depend on them. University administrators must understand how to improve University bus service in order to treat this group fairly. The main contribution of this paper is to examine how University bus service can help achieve social equity and sustainability goals. It investigates this by reporting the results of a survey of 303 students at Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman in Iran concerning their travel demands and University bus service utilization. Grounded theory and structural equation modeling is used to analyze the daily commute preferences of university students influenced by their characteristics, fleet condition, fares, station condition, and time factors. This study identifies various steps that the university administration can take to make University bus service more efficient and attractive, such as updating the bus fleet, improving stations, increasing security, and improving pedestrian access to stations. Survey respondents reported the highest satisfaction levels with fare levels, the security in buses, and waiting times. Women reported feeling discriminated against in their daily commutes. Poor-quality University bus service contributes to a negative feedback loop that increases automobile use and reduces university travel sustainability.

Suggested Citation

  • Navid Nadimi & Aliakbar Zamzam & Todd Litman, 2023. "University Bus Services: Responding to Students’ Travel Demands?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-17, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:11:p:8921-:d:1161475
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/8921/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/8921/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Navid Nadimi & Rosalia Camporeale & Mostafa Khaleghi & Mohamadreza Haghani & Abbas Sheykhfard & Khaled Shaaban, 2023. "A Method to Determine an Equity Score for Transportation Systems in the Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-22, March.
    2. Behbahani, Hamid & Nazari, Sobhan & Jafari Kang, Masood & Litman, Todd, 2019. "A conceptual framework to formulate transportation network design problem considering social equity criteria," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 171-183.
    3. Marco De Angelis & Luca Mantecchini & Luca Pietrantoni, 2021. "A Cluster Analysis of University Commuters: Attitudes, Personal Norms and Constraints, and Travel Satisfaction," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(9), pages 1-15, April.
    4. Ahmed, Qureshi Intikhab & Lu, Huapu & Ye, Shi, 2008. "Urban transportation and equity: A case study of Beijing and Karachi," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 125-139, January.
    5. Zhou, Jiangping, 2012. "Sustainable commute in a car-dominant city: Factors affecting alternative mode choices among university students," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(7), pages 1013-1029.
    6. Lucas, Karen, 2012. "Transport and social exclusion: Where are we now?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(C), pages 105-113.
    7. Quinones, Lina Marcela, 2020. "Sexual harassment in public transport in Bogotá," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 54-69.
    8. Rotaris, Lucia & Danielis, Romeo, 2014. "The impact of transportation demand management policies on commuting to college facilities: A case study at the University of Trieste, Italy," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 127-140.
    9. Neil Cuthill & Mengqiu Cao & Yuqi Liu & Xing Gao & Yuerong Zhang, 2019. "The Association between Urban Public Transport Infrastructure and Social Equity and Spatial Accessibility within the Urban Environment: An Investigation of Tramlink in London," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-18, February.
    10. Cox, Andrew & Prager, Fynnwin & Rose, Adam, 2011. "Transportation security and the role of resilience: A foundation for operational metrics," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 307-317, March.
    11. Abolfazl Dehghanmongabadi & Şebnem Hoşkara, 2018. "Challenges of Promoting Sustainable Mobility on University Campuses: The Case of Eastern Mediterranean University," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-21, December.
    12. Nordfjærn, Trond & Egset, Kaja Solland & Mehdizadeh, Milad, 2019. "“Winter is coming”: Psychological and situational factors affecting transportation mode use among university students," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 45-53.
    13. Martens, Karel & Golub, Aaron & Robinson, Glenn, 2012. "A justice-theoretic approach to the distribution of transportation benefits: Implications for transportation planning practice in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 684-695.
    14. Mehdizadeh, Milad & Shariat-Mohaymany, Afshin, 2020. "Who are more likely to break the rule of congestion charging? Evidence from an active scheme with no referendum voting," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 63-79.
    15. Zhou, Jiangping, 2014. "From better understandings to proactive actions: Housing location and commuting mode choices among university students," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 166-175.
    16. Efstathios Bouhouras & Socrates Basbas & Georgios Mintsis & Christos Taxiltaris & Marios Miltiadou & Andreas Nikiforiadis & Maria Natalia Konstantinidou & Eleni Mavropoulou, 2022. "Level of Satisfaction among University Students Using Various Transport Modes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-14, March.
    17. Low, Wai-Ying & Cao, Mengqiu & De Vos, Jonas & Hickman, Robin, 2020. "The journey experience of visually impaired people on public transport in London," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 137-148.
    18. Ricciardi, Anthony Michael & Xia, Jianhong(Cecilia) & Currie, Graham, 2015. "Exploring public transport equity between separate disadvantaged cohorts: a case study in Perth, Australia," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 111-122.
    19. Ibarra-Rojas, O.J. & Delgado, F. & Giesen, R. & Muñoz, J.C., 2015. "Planning, operation, and control of bus transport systems: A literature review," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 38-75.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Branka Trček & Beno Mesarec, 2022. "Pathways to Alternative Transport Mode Choices among University Students and Staff—Commuting to the University of Maribor since 2010," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-19, September.
    2. Bagdatli, Muhammed Emin Cihangir & Ipek, Fatima, 2022. "Transport mode preferences of university students in post-COVID-19 pandemic," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 20-32.
    3. Rotaris, Lucia & Danielis, Romeo, 2015. "Commuting to college: The effectiveness and social efficiency of transportation demand management policies," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 158-168.
    4. Butler, Alex & Sweet, Matthias, 2020. "No free rides: Winners and losers of the proposed Toronto Transit Commission U-Pass program," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 15-28.
    5. Silver, Kelli & Lopes, André & Vale, David & da Costa, Nuno Marques, 2023. "The inequality effects of public transport fare: The case of Lisbon's fare reform," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    6. Wojciech Keblowski & Frédéric Dobruszkes & Kobe Boussauw, 2022. "Moving past sustainable transport studies: Towards a critical perspective on urban transport," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/341191, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Navid Nadimi & Rosalia Camporeale & Mostafa Khaleghi & Mohamadreza Haghani & Abbas Sheykhfard & Khaled Shaaban, 2023. "A Method to Determine an Equity Score for Transportation Systems in the Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(7), pages 1-22, March.
    8. Kębłowski, Wojciech & Dobruszkes, Frédéric & Boussauw, Kobe, 2022. "Moving past sustainable transport studies: Towards a critical perspective on urban transport," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 74-83.
    9. Jun Yang & Andong Guo & Xueming Li & Tai Huang, 2018. "Study of the Impact of a High-Speed Railway Opening on China’s Accessibility Pattern and Spatial Equality," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-13, August.
    10. Camporeale, Rosalia & Caggiani, Leonardo & Ottomanelli, Michele, 2019. "Modeling horizontal and vertical equity in the public transport design problem: A case study," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 184-206.
    11. Hasnine, Md Sami & Lin, TianYang & Weiss, Adam & Habib, Khandker Nurul, 2018. "Determinants of travel mode choices of post-secondary students in a large metropolitan area: The case of the city of Toronto," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 161-171.
    12. Cunha, Isabel & Silva, Cecília, 2023. "Assessing the equity impact of cycling infrastructure allocation: Implications for planning practice," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 15-26.
    13. Aghaabbasi, Mahdi & Shekari, Zohreh Asadi & Shah, Muhammad Zaly & Olakunle, Oloruntobi & Armaghani, Danial Jahed & Moeinaddini, Mehdi, 2020. "Predicting the use frequency of ride-sourcing by off-campus university students through random forest and Bayesian network techniques," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 262-281.
    14. Ben-Elia, Eran & Benenson, Itzhak, 2019. "A spatially-explicit method for analyzing the equity of transit commuters' accessibility," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 31-42.
    15. Zhao, Pengjun & Cao, Yushu, 2020. "Commuting inequity and its determinants in Shanghai: New findings from big-data analytics," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 20-37.
    16. Boisjoly, Geneviève & Serra, Bernardo & Oliveira, Gabriel T. & El-Geneidy, Ahmed, 2020. "Accessibility measurements in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba and Recife, Brazil," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    17. Gössling, Stefan, 2016. "Urban transport justice," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-9.
    18. Cui, Boer & Boisjoly, Geneviève & El-Geneidy, Ahmed & Levinson, David, 2019. "Accessibility and the journey to work through the lens of equity," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 269-277.
    19. Kelobonye, Keone & McCarney, Gary & Xia, Jianhong (Cecilia) & Swapan, Mohammad Shahidul Hasan & Mao, Feng & Zhou, Heng, 2019. "Relative accessibility analysis for key land uses: A spatial equity perspective," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 82-93.
    20. Rui Xiao & Guofeng Wang & Meng Wang, 2018. "Transportation Disadvantage and Neighborhood Sociodemographics: A Composite Indicator Approach to Examining Social Inequalities," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 137(1), pages 29-43, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:11:p:8921-:d:1161475. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.