01659974

Component

In 2012, the City of Kingston, Ontario, offered free transit passes to grade 9 students as part of a pilot program to allow students to experience the public transit system operated by Kingston Transit. The program was then incrementally expanded annually to include all students attending high schools in Kingston. This paper presents the results from a recent analysis conducted to investigate the impact of the free transit passes on students’ mobility. The approach utilized ridership data provided by Kingston Transit to identify ridership trends and analyzed the results of an in-person survey at three local high schools. The purpose of the survey was to explore the impact of the transit pass program and examine the students’ travel patterns related to travel independence. The collected data are useful in understanding impacts of free transit on youth independent travel behaviour. Findings suggest that since the implementation of this program, there has been a significant increase in student transit ridership and participation in after-school activities. Overall, the current study will provide other municipalities an approach on how to evaluate the impact of youth transit fare programs and advance evidence-based decision making for transit pass programs.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP030 Standing Committee on Public Transportation Marketing and Fare Policy.

18-04972

English

17p

2018

Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References

Attitudes; Free fares; High school students; Literature reviews; Mobility; Mode choice; Pilot studies; Public transit; Ridership; Transit passes; Travel patterns; Travel surveys

Kingston Transit

Kingston (Canada)

Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018 Paper #18-04972

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 8 2018 11:14AM