Users’ willingness to ride an integrated public-transport service: A literature review

•A thorough literature review on the use of integrated public transport systems.•Limited research on the psychological and policy aspect of travel behavior.•Predominantly research focused on the operational aspect of transfer-making.•It is proffered that out-of-vehicle service quality has an effect on transfer-making.

The research question this review focused on is “What are the factors that influence commuters’ willingness to ride an integrated public transport (PT) system?”. Transfers are a key component in the successful operation of an integrated system. The role of transfers is two-folds. First, transfers increase the accessibility of various destinations for users. Second, interchanges that facilitate transfers need to be provided in the network at strategic locations to reduce duplication of the PT routes; thus improving the reliability of the network. This work provides a comprehensive review of the studies focusing on mode switch to PT with emphasis on factors influencing commuters’ willingness to make transfers. It is categorized into three perspectives: psychological, operational and policy. This qualitative systematic review reveals that the predominant focus of studies related to transfers has been on the operational aspect. The number of studies related to the psychological aspect and the effects of policies, on integrated systems, to encourage ridership of routes with transfers is limited. This is a major shortcoming in our current capability, as without a clear understanding of all three aspects, transfers are unlikely to be designed properly when developing an integrated multimodal system.