Incorporating the traveller's experience value in assessing the quality of transit nodes: A Rotterdam case study

In order to obtain a modal shift from car towards public transport, the quality of a public transport journey has to be increased. The transfer is the least valued part of the journey where a traveller perceives one minute of waiting as three minutes. By improving the least valued part, the overall quality of a public transport journey increases. There are three strategies to add value to the transfer at a transit node: accelerate, condense and enhance. In order to determine where these strategies need to be applied, the node-place model is used. The node-place model assesses the quality of transit nodes by focusing on the node and place characteristics of a transit node. The potential of transit nodes can be indicated by classifying them in twelve transit node typologies. However, the node-place model only indicates where it is needed to accelerate and condense. Therefore, in this thesis the node-place model is extended with the experience value in order to provide insight into where enhancement is needed. By doing a literature review, the criteria for the experience value were determined. An MCDM, the Best-Worst Method (BWM) was used to derive the weights for the criteria. The input for BWM was obtained by conducting a survey among 160 respondents. Finally, the node-place model and the transit node typologies were extended with the experience value in order to assess the quality and indicate the potential. A case study in Rotterdam was used to apply and illustrate the method. The method was evaluated by comparing results from the new method with the node-place model and it was concluded that the new method shows more accurate results.Transport, Infrastructure & LogisticsTransport & PlanningCivil Engineering and Geoscience