Identification of contributing factors and utility rate of choosing various Bike-on-Bus methods, a case study of Isfahan City

The integration of public transport and bicycle modes via using Bike-on-Bus methods could be considered as one of the effective policies to increase the public transport patronage. This article presents the results of a research, undertaken to identify the underlying measures contributing to the drivers’ willingness to choose Bike-on-Bus options and to choose the best favored options. Some of the innovations of this research could be enumerated as the inclusion of a number of new cycling methods, consideration of cycling in the Bike-on-Bus context, and prioritization of underlying factors contributing to the utility rate of using these methods. The Analytic Hierarchy Process method was used to prioritize these measures and to identify the most favored Bike-on-Bus mode options. The required data was collected through the questionnaires completed by two representative sample groups namely, transportation professionals and private car users in Isfahan. The data related to the transportation professionals was used to derive pairwise comparison matrices. The data related to the private car users was then used for the pairwise comparison of options. The results indicated that the most relevant measures to choose the best Bike-on-Bus methods, in descending order of their importance were: total travel time, total trip costs and the feeling of insecurity from theft, respectively. The relative weight of these measures were 0.294, 0.227 and 0.218, respectively. The most favored Bike-on-Bus methods were identified as electric scooters, special cabins for carrying bicycles and folding bikes, respectively. The relative weight of these measures were 0.249, 0.197 and 0.190, respectively.