It has been both surmised and reasonably documented that the exponential growth in busridership seen recently by transit agencies across the US has been spurred, at least in part, by rising fuelprices. A clear relationship exists between ridership and fuel price, although many other factors contributeto ridership growth and fluctuation. These supplementary factors vary between transit agencies andseveral lend themselves to service quality measurement. Perceived service quality is an importantcontributor to public transportation ridership and the research contained herein explores severalcommunity and bus system characteristics associated with perceived service quality and how thesecharacteristics relate to correlation coefficients between fuel price and ridership, using an unconventionaltrivariate comparison method. However, after comparing fuel price reactivity across US systems based ontheir 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 savemoney, cost-conscious travelers on transit systems nationwide appear willing to compromise on aspectsnormally linked to convenience in order to use transit and minimize their fuel expenditures. Of the 341systems 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 spectraexhibited this positive correlation.
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