Rarely Enjoyed? A Count Data Analysis of Ridership in Germany's Public Transport

Manuel Frondel and Colin Vance

No 209, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: Focusing on adult members of German households, this paper investigates the determinants of public transit ridership with the aim of quantifying the effects of fuel prices, fares, person-level attributes, and characteristics of the transit system on transport counts over a five-day week. The reliance on individual data raises several conceptual and empirical issues, the most fundamental of which is the large proportion of zero values in transit counts. To accommodate this feature of the data, we employ modeling procedures referred to as zero-inflated models (ZIMs), which order observations into two latent regimes defined by whether the individual never uses public transport. Our estimates reveal fuel prices to have a positive and substantial influence on transit ridership, though there is no evidence for a statistically signifi cant impact of the fare.

Keywords: transit ridership; pricing policy; Zero-Inflated Models; household data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
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Journal Article: Rarely enjoyed? A count data analysis of ridership in Germany's public transport (2011)
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