Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2008. / "Graduate Program in Planning and Public Policy." Includes bibliographical references (p. 479-498).

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1988. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-114). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-77) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-213). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1973. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 125-139).

Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) is a relatively new form of public transport provision; it is an intermediate form somewhere between conventional bus and taxi services. Over the last decade, DRT services have grown in popularity mainly influenced by the development of transport telematics. The telematics-based DRT system, which forms the focus of this research, allows new generation DRT services to have greater flexibility in time and route design, and to enable immediate advance booking and response to travel requests. These DRT services have shown important advantages and benefits in several European cities and regions particularly as an alternative solution of public transport in low/dispersed demand areas and times. Moreover, DRT services have an important role to tackle social exclusion. However, several previous works reveal that many existing DRT services are still not performing to their true potential and there is still a research need to investigate DRT services from the passengers’ perspective. Therefore, this research studies DRT services from the passengers’ perspective by selecting the LinkUp DRT scheme as the case study. LinkUp is a telematics-based DRT scheme which operates as a public transport service in Tyne and Wear, UK with fully flexible routes in defined operating areas. A discrete choice model with latent variables is applied to model the passengers’ usage rate of the LinkUp DRT services. The assumption of the usage rate model developed in this research is that each passenger has an underlying utility for using the LinkUp services and the passengers who use LinkUp at different levels of frequencies have different levels of utility. The individual’s utility has an underlying latent variable and his usage rate of LinkUp in terms of number of trips per week serves as choice indicators. This study hypothesises that characteristics, and attitude and perception towards the LinkUp services of the passenger affect his utility. The passengers’ attitude and perception are constructed as latent variables (models) in the usage rate model. Therefore, the usage rate model consists of two sub-models: latent variable and discrete choice models which are specified as Multiple Indicators and MultIple Causes (MIMIC) and ordered probit models respectively. Three latent variables are proposed to quantify the passengers’ attitude and perception, which are latent Awareness, Satisfaction, and Relative Advantage. Consequently, the usage rate model is represented by the utility, which is hypothesised to be the function of the individual passenger’s characteristics and three latent variables. The results provide useful information for improving the LinkUp DRT scheme, implementing and developing telematics-based DRT services, further developing the travel behaviour model for DRT passengers, as well as for the DRT operators and policy makers.

Rural communities face a range of challenges associated with accessibility and connectivity. Though real-time passenger information systems (RTPIS) have been long heralded as offering the potential to mitigate some of these challenges their deployment in rural areas has been very limited. The lack of real-time passenger information has been identified as a contributing factor to a multitude of issues, such as high car usage, low public transport use and travel uncertainty. There is considerable potential for appropriate technologies to contribute to the alleviation of these issues, as evidence exists that they can influence travel behaviour, and cultivate positive attitudes towards the service and the operator. This thesis investigated the interplay between rural passenger experience and real-time information provision. Overall, this work aims to provide an initial stepping point on to understanding the interplay between passenger behaviour, disruptions, passenger experience, and real-time information. In order to explore the aforementioned, first, a series of interviews and focus groups with rural public transport passengers, rural transport operators, government agencies and members of academia have been carried out to study the rural passengers' responses to planned and unplanned travel disruption. Based on these i) a conceptual model that aims to describe the passenger recovery phases to disruption and the associated passenger information requirements, ii) and a framework that highlights characteristics of transport behaviour, and aligns them with drivers of transport behaviour adaptation have been created. Next, through a series of co-designed sessions in various rural areas throughout the UK a mobile technology probe, which provides public transport real time information to the passengers has been developed. Then using the technology probe a two-week before-and-after intervention study with 15 participants has been carried out. The results indicate that real-time information provided through the technology probe adjusted the travel behaviour of the participants. Namely, it improved the utilisation of waiting time of the participants, improved the efficiency of their travelling, and enabled them to find alternatives when needed. Further, to get a better picture of the effect of real-time information on rural travellers, during the intervention study 6 of the participants in their everyday travels for 7 days have been actively observed by the author. The outcomes from this supplemented the data from the study and illustrated how the rural public transport travellers used the system in their day-to-day travels. Finally, all our findings have been combined to co-create a system design with rural public transport passengers that aims to improve their experience during disruption. The final design mainly concentrated on providing information regarding pre-trip, on-trip and on boarding point, journey planning, supporting the rural passenger experience through social media, and disruption. In order to evaluate the applicability and suitability of the design, and explore how it relates to the needs of the rural passengers, two focus groups have been conducted. The results of the evaluation activity illustrate that the mobile RTPI system design was perceived as highly useful and relevant to the needs of the rural passenger.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves.