CROWDING VALUATION IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT BASED ON STATED PREFERENCE DATA FROM SANTIAGO DE CHILE

88 pagesBased on stated preference (SP) survey data from Santiago metro system, thisthesis analyzes the influence of congestion on passengers’ perceived travel time. The survey data includes 413 respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics, as well as their decisions in each choice scenario (2,461 valid in total), where both options may have a varied journey duration, crowding level, and whether or not a seat is available. Discrete choice models such as multinomial logit (MNL), mixed multinomial logit (MMNL), and latent class logit (LCL) are estimated in both preference space and crowding multiplier space (CM-space). The findings reveal that passengers are willing to accept longer travel times in exchange for less crowded conditions and there is significant heterogeneity in the amount of willingness throughout the population. Specifically, crowding is viewed as a negative factor by metro users, represented as a perceptional weight on travel time that may reach a value of 1.5-1.7 for sitting and 1.9-2.2 for standing at a density of 6 standees per square meter. Moreover, crowding levels in the SP survey are represented using three distinct forms (text, 2D diagram, or photo), but no significant impact of the varied forms of representation on crowding perception is discovered. The results also show that utilizing a smartphone has a significant impact on decreasing passengers’ perceived congestion levels when they have to stand throughout the journey. There is also an international comparison with prior research from Seoul, New York, Sweden, ˆIle-de-France, London and the South East of England, and Netherlands