Speaker
Description
The rapid evolution of urban built environments has significantly enhanced the mobility of people, goods, and information. The integration of social and technological systems in urban transportation has created a complex urban framework, presenting substantial challenges to mobility planning and policymaking. Among various transportation modes, buses are particularly significant due to their wide coverage, large capacity, and mass user base, making them essential for addressing these challenges. However, with the rise of diverse transportation options in the digital era, a critical question arises: Is there still a need for buses? Or, more specifically, should buses continue to play a central role in the evolution of urban mobility?
Buses offer several advantages, including affordability, large capacity, and the ability to serve marginalized communities, providing equitable mobility services across urban areas. However, they face significant ridership losses due to the growing popularity of new, private-oriented modes of transport, such as ride-hailing services, carpooling, shared bicycles, and rail-based transport. While multimodal transportation systems offer many benefits, the role of buses in providing emergency transportation support and maintaining connectivity for communities beyond major corridors is invaluable. In a broader sense, buses remain the backbone of urban transportation systems, supporting the development of more advanced modes and acting as a “silent enabler” that underpins urban mobility, even in an era of emerging technologies like eVTOL.
Public dissatisfaction with buses has become a key obstacle to the coordinated development of multimodal transportation systems, hindering overall transportation efficiency. This study aims to identify public perceptions and sentiments toward buses using a user-centric approach. By analyzing global data across diverse cultural contexts, this research highlights both commonalities and differences in public attitudes, providing valuable insights into universal user demands and helping identify strategies to address declining ridership.
The research employs grounded theory from a transportation sociology perspective and uses "positive search" and "negative search" strategies to collect textual data related to bus usage from international social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Through axial coding, sentiment analysis, and principal component analysis, this study identifies global users’ emotional inclinations and value expectations regarding bus services. Additionally, the study integrates findings from field surveys conducted in China, providing a localized perspective to the global discourse, offering a comprehensive analysis and solution framework.
The findings reveal that commuter travel is the most dominant use case for buses, while tourism and leisure are the most desired areas for service expansion. Public concerns focus on service quality instability, poor station planning, and other key issues such as unreliable schedules, inadequate coverage, overcrowding, and uncertain travel times, all of which reduce user satisfaction.
Improving urban mobility requires a deeper understanding of specific user needs. This study represents an initial step in this process by identifying the reasons behind public dissatisfaction with buses. By examining the "transport society" within digital networks, we offer a nuanced understanding of regional differences in public complaints and appreciation for bus services. Based on these insights, we propose adaptive optimization strategies for bus planning and operations, providing a public perspective to support the development of multimodal transportation systems. Moreover, we offer urban planning recommendations to enhance transportation services and contribute to the efficient, safe, low-energy, and low-pollution operation of cities. These efforts aim to resolve urban challenges and promote sustainable urban development.
References
Melo, S., Gomes, R., Abbasi, R., Arantes, A., 2024. Demand-Responsive Transport for Urban Mobility: Integrating Mobile Data Analytics to Enhance Public Transportation Systems. Sustainability 16, 4367.
Venter, C., Jennings, G., Hidalgo, D., Pineda, A.F.V., 2018. The equity impacts of bus rapid transit: A review of the evidence and implications for sustainable transport. Int. J. Sustain. Transp. 12, 140–152.
Wang, Y., Cao, M., Liu, Y., Ye, R., Gao, X., Ma, L., 2022. Public transport equity in Shenyang: Using structural equation modelling. Res. Transp. Bus. Manag. 42, 100555.
| Keywords | Urban Public Transportation;Public Perception;Textual Sentiment Analysis;Buses;Transportation Sociology |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | Yes |
