Identifying public preferences using multi-criteria decision making for assessing the shift of urban commuters from private to public transport: A case study of Delhi

• The pair-wise weighing method has been used to priorities the choices of commuters to the shift to public transport system.
• The primary survey was conducted to collect the data under four parent criteria: reliability, comfort, safety and cost.
• Safety was found to be the most important criteria and then reliability, cost and comfort.
• 96% of the commuters are willing to shift to public transport.

Shifting urban commuters to public transport can be an effective strategy to deal with the energy and environmental problems associated with the transport sector. In order to enhance public transport the mode of choice for urban commuters, public expectations and requirements should be at the centre of the policy-making process. This study uses pair-wise weighing method (i.e. Analytical Hierarchy Process) to derive priorities for different criteria for shifting urban commuters to the public transport system based on their opinion. The primary survey has been conducted to collect the data for identifying public preferences for public transport characteristics under four parent criteria: reliability, comfort, safety and cost, identified based on literature review and expert opinion. This information was collected using questionnaire based surveys between January 2013 and July 2013 from nearly 50 locations using a stratified random sampling technique from nine districts of Delhi. Our results suggest safety as the most important criteria (36% of total) for encouraging the urban commuters to shift from private vehicles to public transport and then reliability (27%), cost (21%) and comfort (16%). Based on above four criteria, commuters were found to be happy with Delhi metro services compared to buses and other mode of public transport due to more frequency, adherence to schedule, less travel time, comfort and safety. Commuters were willing to pay more for better public transport service since the travel cost was not considered to be one of the important criteria. The results also showed that 96% commuters are willing to shift to public transport if above criteria or services are considered for providing an efficient public transport system. These results can assist transport planners to integrate public preferences with the available technical alternatives for the wise allocation of the available resources.