Macroscopic analysis of fare elasticity and accessibility on integration of BRT-MRT stations and proposed bus stops in Dhaka City

Abstract

Fare, accessibility, and route ensures sustainable transit system. Fare influences the mobility of a region, travel behavior, and ridership. Travelers changes the route choice, mode choice, and trip frequency in response to fare change. Furthermore, fare elasticity changes with the directionality of the fare change and journey distance. Moreover, accessibility and transportation challenges are closely intertwined. Planning and evaluating the transportation system can be done using a variety of factors, including accessibility, road conditions, and vehicle travel conditions. Dhaka’s 38% trips are accommodated by bus, the only available public transit for the city. The existing system cannot cope with the increasing demand. Thus, the GoB has decided to introduce two BRT and five MRT lines in Dhaka. Additionally, DTCA, DNCC, and DSCC have undertaken a project to restructure the existing bus routes to ensure maximum accessibility by geographical coverage and to minimize the overlapping to fulfill the travel demand of users. Bus stops of Dhaka city can act as complimentary service for accessing and egressing transit stations. Therefore, several previous research have been reviewed in this study and four parameters- residential land use, non-residential land use, available pedestrian walking network, and non-motorized road network are considered in ranking the bus stops by analytic network process. Stated preference survey has been performed in this study to determine the value of time of public transit users of Dhaka city. Later, survey responses along with DAP geodatabase, RSTP database have been considered in this study for fare elasticity determination of transit ridership and accessibility assessment for BRT-MRT stations. It has been found that the demand of BRT line is highly dependent on the fare and the demand of MRT line is less dependent on the fare. Because relationship between fare and BRT ridership has been found to be elastic since the elasticity value ranges from -2.8840 to 2.0644. Whereas relationship between fare and MRT ridership has been found to be inelastic for MRT since the elasticity value ranges from -0.8289 to 0.0184. However, for combined scenario, MRT ridership will increase if the BRT fare increases due to cross-elasticity and vice-versa. The values of fare elasticity also indicates that BRT line will act as a luxury service, whereas MRT line will be a necessity for Dhaka City. Coefficient of fare from the multiple linear regression model for transit demand indicates that people might not be attracted to travel through BRT-3 (Phase 01) since this line could not offer the full origin-destination trip coverage. These travelers are subjected to transfer penalty for switching to another mode which may lead to this unattraction. Whereas people might be attracted to BRT-3 (Phase 02) regardless of fare since the coefficient is positive. This line may offer the travelers the full origin-destination trip coverage with a good speed and availability of vehicles due to less headway which can lead to this attraction. This study has discovered that bus route rationalization network doesn’t have proper integration with BRT-MRT lines. Moreover, it has been observed from this study that eight (Aarong Milk Factory, Army Stadium, Bailey Road, BARI, BRT Depot, Gazipur Chowrasta East, Maleker Bari, and Shibbari Chowrasta) out of 40 (20%) stations of BRT-3 line don’t have any bus stops around the 400m buffer area. However, two (Niketan and Dasherkandi) out of 15 (13.33%) stations of MRT-5 South, three (Bilamalia, Gulshan-2, and Vatara) out of 14 (21.43%) stations of MRT-5 North line and three (Uttara North, Uttara Center, and Uttara South) out of 16 (18.75%) stations of MRT-6 line don’t have any bus stops within the 800m buffer area. In addition to that, there is no bus route network along the MRT-1 East line. Policy makers can use these findings as a reference to improve the integration of ongoing transit and bus route rationalization projects in future.