Riders’ perceptions towards transit bus electrification: Evidence from Salt Lake City, Utah
Introduction
With the transportation sector accounting for the largest portion (27%) of total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020 (EPA, 2022), decarbonization of transport has become a crucial challenge. Electric vehicles (EVs) could help by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, air and noise pollution as well as alleviate energy security concerns. Electrification of medium and heavy-duty vehicles can mitigate the adverse health impacts to underserved communities that are mainly located near major transit hubs and corridors (Thomas et al., 2022). Battery Electric Buses (BEBs), in particular, are proposed as a solution to the local air pollution caused by diesel buses. As of 2019, less than half (45%) of all buses were diesel powered, with BEBs comprising a small share (1%) of the active fleet (APTA, 2020). Several service providers and transit agencies are introducing BEBs to their fleets, setting up ambitious goals of full fleet transit electrification in the coming decade (roughly 70% of the U.S. fleet by 2030).
Prior research on BEBs has mainly focused on the analysis of planning and operational characteristics for informing the decision-making process for the fleet transition. Past studies have developed simulation and optimization models for investigating scheduling, BEBs battery size, charging infrastructure allocation, and analysis of energy demand and consumption (He et al., 2019, Iliopoulou and Kepaptsoglou, 2021, Kunith et al., 2017, Liu et al., 2021, Wu et al., 2021). In addition, total cost of ownership or lifecycle approaches have been widely used for the economic evaluation of BEBs (Basma et al., 2022, Jefferies and Göhlich, 2020, Rupp et al., 2020). These methods allow examining multiple operational and charging infrastructure attributes of transit networks operating with BEBs in a bid to provide guidance and decision-making tools to service providers and transit agencies that might be hesitant to electrify their fleets. Major barriers to the willingness of service providers to electrify their transit fleets, as reported in the literature, include financial barriers, such as high upfront costs (Li et al., 2018, Mohamed et al., 2018), and operational and technological barriers (Aldenius et al., 2022), such as unknown risks and standardization (Mohamed et al., 2018). In addition, for large-scale transit bus electrification deployments, the installation of charging infrastructure is needed, which will demand space and affect the design of transit depots (Linscott et al., 2021).
Apart from the financial and environmental benefits that BEBs can offer to the operators (Holland et al., 2021, Meishner et al., 2017), the shift of transit agencies towards more sustainable fleets may affect their image and influence users’ and nonusers’ perceptions toward transit, as environmental concerns and sustainability have become important in mode choice or car ownership decisions (Asgari Toorzani and Rassafi, 2022, Gkargkavouzi et al., 2019, Shokoohyar et al., 2022). BEBs would likely affect some important service attributes, such as ride comfort with respect to noise and gas or the smell of fumes. However, the attitudes and the characteristics that affect riders’ perceptions towards transit bus electrification have not been studied to date. Extensive literature has focused on the importance of service quality and user satisfaction to assess behavioral intention and loyalty toward urban public transportation (for example, see the discussion in Losada-Rojas et al., 2019, van Lierop et al., 2018). The need to examine travelers’ preferences, perceptions, attitudes, and opinions toward BEBs has only been recently pointed out (Wang et al., 2022), as it can provide valuable insights for the successful deployment of BEBs and their impacts on public transit systems operations and ridership.
In this context, this paper examines transit bus electrification from a user’s perspective. In more detail, the research questions that this paper attempts to address are the following:
- i.
What are bus riders’ perceptions towards the ride comfort attributes of BEBs (e.g., quieter operation, better acceleration, no smell of diesel or gas fumes)?
- ii.
What are bus riders’ sentiments towards transit bus electrification?
By attempting to answer the aforementioned research questions, this study identifies the factors that affect riders’ perceptions, and their preferences and concerns related to bus electrification using econometric models that account for the interrelationships across riders’ perceptions and opinions. Findings of this study can offer guidance to transit operators and agencies by informing their strategic plans, marketing campaigns, and systemwide operations to accommodate preferences towards BEBs.
Section snippets
Literature review
As research on riders’ preferences and perceptions towards BEBs is scarce, this section first presents an overview of the quality-of-service attributes that have been argued to affect the attractiveness of public transit and then, discusses the attitudes and perceptions towards emerging technologies in transit, as reported in the literature.
Empirical setting
The empirical setting for this study is Salt Lake City, Utah. The majority of commuters in the city drive alone to work (63.1%), while 1.9% of employees take public transit and 8.5% carpool. Additionally, almost 12% of Salt Lake City residents travel in under 10 minutes to work (ACS, 2022). Moreover, according to the 2021 ACS 1-year estimates, 97.7% of Salt Lake City’s households own at least one car.
Although a small portion of commuters use public transportation, UTA offers services with
Methodology
Two econometric models were estimated that account for the interrelationships across rider opinions and their support (or not) for the transition to BEBs in a bid to examine transit bus electrification from a user’s perspective and identify factors that affect rider perceptions and their preferences and concerns related to bus electrification. When two or more dependent variables are correlated or share unobserved characteristics, univariate modeling approaches cannot provide unbiased parameter
Multivariate binary probit estimation results
Table 3 presents the estimation results of the multivariate binary probit model to assess perceptions about BEB ride comfort attributes. All variables are statistically significant at a 90 % confidence level. The correlations across the three equations are large and significant, which validates the selection of the model and further demonstrates that the perceptions about ride comfort attributes of BEBs (quieter engine, better acceleration, and no diesel or gas fumes) are interrelated.
The
Summary and conclusions
This paper examined users’ attitudes and perceptions towards transit bus electrification. To this end, survey data were collected in Salt Lake City, Utah, gathering 224 responses. The study area was selected both based on air quality concerns in the area as well as the plans of UTA to gradually electrify its fleet. The factors that affect riders’ perceptions towards the different ride comfort attributes of BEBs (quieter engine, better acceleration, and no diesel or gas fumes) were found to be
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, under award number DE-EE0009213, and the Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification (ASPIRE) Engineering Research Center funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1941524. We would like to thank graduate students Jonathon Sinton at Purdue University and Joshua Ward at Utah State University for their contributions to the survey design and data collection. We would like also to
References (57)
- et al.
Electric buses in England and Sweden – Overcoming barriers to introduction
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
(2022) - et al.
Unconventional green transport innovations in the post-COVID-19 era. A trade-off between green actions and personal health protection
Journal of Business Research
(2023) - et al.
The effect of cultural values on pro-environmental attitude in the context of travel mode choice: A hierarchical approach
Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour
(2022) - et al.
Energy consumption and battery sizing for different types of electric bus service
Energy
(2022) - et al.
Understanding the travel experience and its impact on attitudes, emotions and loyalty towards the transportation provider–A quantitative study with mid-distance bus trips
Transport Policy
(2014) - et al.
Modelling perceived quality for urban public transport systems using weighted variables and random parameters
Transport Policy
(2018) - et al.
Mainstream consumers driving plug-in battery-electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars: A qualitative analysis of responses and evaluations
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
(2012) - et al.
When and why do people choose automated buses over conventional buses? Results of a context-dependent stated choice experiment
Sustainable Cities and Society
(2021) - et al.
Fast-charging station deployment for battery electric bus systems considering electricity demand charges
Sustainable Cities and Society
(2019) - et al.
Investigating end-user acceptance of autonomous electric buses to accelerate diffusion
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
(2019)
The environmental benefits of transportation electrification: Urban buses
Energy Policy
Robust electric transit route network design problem (RE-TRNDP) with delay considerations: Model and application
Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
The relationship between norms, satisfaction and public transport use: A comparison across six European cities using structural equation modelling
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
Willingness to ride and perceptions of autonomous public transit
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
Electrification of a city bus network—An optimization model for cost-effective placing of charging infrastructure and battery sizing of fast-charging electric bus systems
International Journal of Sustainable Transportation
Emerging trends and innovations for electric bus adoption—a comparative case study of contracting and financing of 22 cities in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe
Research in Transportation Economics
Optimal charging strategy for large-scale electric buses considering resource constraints
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
Exploring intercity passengers’ attitudes and loyalty to intercity passenger rail: Evidence from an on-board survey
Transport Policy
What hinders adoption of the electric bus in Canadian transit? Perspectives of transit providers
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
Drivers of customer satisfaction with public transport services
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
The adoption of sustainable innovations: Driven by symbolic and environmental motives
Global Environmental Change
Reliability evaluation of power distribution grids considering the dynamic charging mode of electric buses
Energy Reports
Economic and ecological optimization of electric bus charging considering variable electricity prices and CO2eq intensities
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
The role of instrumental, hedonic and symbolic attributes in the intention to adopt electric vehicles
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
Car use: lust and must. Instrumental, symbolic and affective motives for car use
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice
Instrumental-reasoned and symbolic-affective motives for using a motor car
Transportation research part F: Traffic psychology and behaviour
Public acceptance and the environmental impact of electric bus services
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
What influences satisfaction and loyalty in public transport? A review of the literature
Transport Reviews
Cited by (4)
Multi-objective planning of electric bus systems in cities with trolleybus infrastructure networks
2024, Sustainable Cities and SocietyReview of batteries reliability in electric vehicle and E-mobility applications
2024, Ain Shams Engineering JournalElectrification pathways for public transport systems
2024, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment