The Influence of Frequency on Route Choice in Mixed Schedule- and Frequency-based Public Transport Systems - The Case of the Greater Copenhagen Area

Understanding and analysing passengers’ route choice preferences is critical to realistically predict the level of service for the passengers’, when timetables change or new infrastructure is build. This paper argues and presents evidence on the influence of frequency of public transport services and whether published timetables are schedule- or frequency-based when describing passengers’ route choice in mixed schedule- and frequency-based public transport systems. The study is based on a revealed preference survey with 5,121 reported trips in the Greater Copenhagen Area. Given the observed trips and a corresponding large choice set with alternative routes, passenger preferences are revealed using the well-known Multinomial Logit model. Utilising recently published research on how passengers time their arrival to the first stop, the paper shows how to estimate passengers’ preferences for avoiding waiting at the first stop. The analysis also shows that passengers prefer high frequency routes. This is shown by considering the highest headway in any leg of a trip, as well as by introducing a variable capturing passengers’ higher preference for frequency-based compared to schedule-based services. On the other hand it is shown, that passengers prefer waiting for a schedule-based service compared to a frequency-based service when transferring, implying that passengers want to be certain about the time they need to wait when transferring. Finally, the paper examines the transformation of the in-vehicle time components according to a Box-Cox transformation, and highlights the varying trade-offs between in-vehicle times of different vehicles at different travel time levels.