Citation

Goodwin PB. Transp. Plann. Tech. 1973; 1(3): 159-174.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1973, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/03081067308717043

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Free public transport could have profound short and long term consequences. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the consequences on modal split for the journey to work. Employees of the London Transport Executive (LTE), who receive free use of buses and tubes and a substantial concession on British Rail services, were surveyed and their travel and other characteristics compared with those of a sample of over 20,000 other central London workers who pay the normal prices. It is found that 6.6 percent of those paying normal prices travel to work by car, but only 2.2 percent of the LTE employees do so. The use of car by car owners is less, and the average distance travelled to work by users of each of the public transport modes greater, for the LTE employees, although the overall average journey distance is about the same. Analysis suggests that LTE employees use the car less and public transport more for their journey to work than the other sample even when allowance is made for differences in car ownership, sex, income, accessibility of public transport to the workplace, and parking facilities. Figures for the proportion of people travelling by each mode to central London in the morning peak in the period 1954?1969 are compared with the changing relative costs of each mode. A model of the form describes reasonably well four out of the six possible choices between pairs of modes, where Pkj is the proportion travelling by mode k of those using modes k or j, and Ck, Cj are the deflated costs in pence per passenger mile of each mode. The survey and time series data as a whole are broadly consistent with a single underlying modal split demand curve which can be approximated by the equation It is found that modal split/cost?difference relationships consistent with the cross?section data are quite close in some respects to the results obtained by extrapolation of the time series data. The two methods agree in suggesting that if the existing tube and bus services were free and the existing British Rail service was operated at 25 percent of the present level of fares, the expected proportion of work journeys to central London by car would be about a third of its present level, if commuters reacted in the way indicated by these analyses. Expected British Rail use would be about three?quarters of its present level, and bus and tube use together about a third more than the present level. The estimates do not take account of feedback effects, which could be substantial.