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Title:

A Successful Visitor Study for Understanding Transit Use

Accession Number:

01589032

Record Type:

Component

Abstract:

Visitors contribute significantly to a city’s economy, and enable cities to remain vibrant, attractive cultural centers. Despite this, the travel needs of the visiting population are poorly understood as few studies are conducted with the primary goal of investigating visitors. In this paper the authors describe one highly successful attempt by the Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) to better understand this population’s attitude and use of transit. Responses from 3,689 visitors were collected via intercept locations, email lists, newsletters, and survey flyers. Results indicated that Chicago transit was doing quite well with visitors such that the majority of visitors already used transit. Regional visitors, which were defined as those who live within the RTA six-county Chicago area and traveled to a tourist location, were much more likely to come to Chicago for a day trip with no overnight stay compared to non-regional visitors. Further, even though international visitors are a much smaller segment, they are a promising growth market for transit as they tend to stay in downtown Chicago, stay much longer than domestic visitors, are familiar with transit from their home country, and open to using it. Key recommendations included that transit in Chicago should be made “part of the visitor experience,” which could be achieved by offering a visitor app with relevant information including opening hours and ticket prices of tourist attractions, as well as real-time, GPS-based information on how to access them via transit.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP030 Standing Committee on Public Transportation Marketing and Fare Policy. Alternate title: The Secret to Conducting a Successful Visitor Study.

Monograph Accession #:

01584066

Report/Paper Numbers:

16-2047

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Fessel, Florian
Campbell, Margaret
Spitz, Gregory
Fahrenwald, Peter

Pagination:

15p

Publication Date:

2016

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References; Tables

Uncontrolled Terms:

Visitors

Geographic Terms:

Chicago (Illinois)

Subject Areas:

Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2016 Paper #16-2047

Files:

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Created Date:

Jan 12 2016 4:53PM