Park and ride, effects on public transport ridership

Sammanfattning: As urban growth accelerates and the need to address environmental issues regardingtransportation is larger than ever and many policymakers have chosen to adapt park and rideas one of their methods to reduce car traffic. However, the effect from adapting the policy isnot very well understood and since the policy can directly conflict with other policies relatedto land use it is important to know which effects can be expected. By knowing which effectsto expect, policy makers can make more sustainable choices in their policy adaption.This study has been carried out using data from two different counties to find out if theeffects from park and ride differ depending on the type of environment it serves. Further, anadditional analysis has been done using temporal data to measure the effect of adapting orexpanding a park and ride facility at a public transport station or stop.It was found that in a rural setting, the relation between park and ride and the number ofpassengers at a public transport station is strong. Stations with more parking spaces hadhigher ridership. This was not the case for stations located in a suburban environment, someeffect was indicated but the relationship was not as strong. The analysis of the two countiesdata showed unreasonably high passenger increases from P&R, indicating that some otherfactor also influences the result in this analysis.From the analysis of the temporal dataset the result showed that stations which adapted parkand ride did have a higher average passenger increase than the general trend within thetransport system. This indicates that park and ride do in fact increase public transportridership.