Identifying Passengers Who Are at Risk of Reducing Public Transport Use: A Survival Time Analysis Using Smart Card Data

This study investigates what types of passengers in the rural city of Kochi, Japan are most likely to reduce their use of buses and trams. In the analysis, two main efforts are made. First, a Cox proportional hazard model is fitted to data from public transport smart cards to identify the "at risk" users, where the risk is identified based on a consecutive reduction of public transport use. This allows us to distinguish changes in the frequency (i.e., lasting reductions of public transport use) from variations of the frequency (i.e., temporal fluctuation of public transport use) in a coarse but simple manner. Second, we develop a set of indicators to characterize the passengers' travel patterns, allowing us to make policy implications for promoting public transport use. In an empirical analysis, the impact of a reduction in tram frequency by public transport authorities on usage of transport services is initially examined using the model and is found not to have any significant short-term effects. Factors affecting public transport use are then identified and discussed. Based on the analysis, suggestions are made to encourage use of public transport in rural cities by selected demographics and travel patterns. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.