User Preferences Regarding Ridesourcing and Informal Intermediate Public Transport

With the advent of advanced app-based and on-demand services (ridesourcing), informal intermediate public transport services in India such as auto-rickshaw are losing their market. In this study, discrete choice theory was employed to study the behavior of users in choosing between these two modes. Stated preference survey was conducted in Mumbai from January to April 2018 to develop a binary logit model. The results show that fare is the most important attribute among all variables and travelers with high income, occupations in the private and business sector, and trips involving shopping and social trips prefer ridesourcing. To determine whether attitudes are important on mode choice, five attitudinal questions were asked from the respondents. Descriptive analysis showed that users are more concerned about safety and security of the service. The results of the study help policymakers improve the services based on the users’ responses.