Effects of Trip Purpose on Transit Fare Elasticiy, Case Study of Isfahan

This paper explores the effects of trip purpose on price elasticity of bus mode. Data for the research was collected through passenger field survey in Isfahan, Iran. Due to the nature of the data, nonlinear regression and nonparametric statistics tools were used for analysis. It was found that the logarithmic function best explains the relationship between percentage of change in demand and percentage of change infare. This implies that increase in the fare has a diminishing return to scale on demand. Average values of elasticity were calculated as (-0.33) for educational trips, (-0.27) for shopping trips, (-0.26) for commuting trips, (-0.66) for leisure trips, (-0.26) for medical trips, (-0.35) for returning-to-home trips, and (-0.54) for other trips. Highest values were observed for leisure trips and lowest values for shopping and commuting trips. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U test were employed to analyze the equity of elasticity values among trip purposes. Results show that differences are significant and therefore, trip purpose does have significant effect on the value of fare elasticity of transit demand.