It has been both surmised and reasonably documented that the exponential growth in bus ridership seen recently by transit agencies across the US has been spurred, at least in part, by rising fuel prices. A clear relationship exists between ridership and fuel price, although many other factors contribute to ridership growth and fluctuation. These supplementary factors vary between transit agencies and several lend themselves to service quality measurement. Perceived service quality is an important contributor to public transportation ridership and the research contained herein explores several community and bus system characteristics associated with perceived service quality and how these characteristics relate to correlation coefficients between fuel price and ridership, using an unconventional trivariate comparison method. However, after comparing fuel price reactivity across US systems based on their aggregate route densities, operating speeds, peak-hour service frequencies, average trip lengths, and average total travel times, this exploratory research concluded that in a concerted effort to save money, cost-conscious travelers on transit systems nationwide appear willing to compromise on aspects normally linked to convenience in order to use transit and minimize their fuel expenditures. Of the 341 systems with statistically significant ridership-fuel price relationships, 77% had positive correlation. Furthermore, the research found that systems at both extremes of the studied service quality spectra exhibited this positive correlation.
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