Decision-Making Process for Demand Response Public Transportation Service Design—A Case Study in Incheon, Korea

Incheon is a major city comprising the metropolitan area around Seoul. However, it ranks the lowest in terms of road extension scale relative to population and number of vehicles. There is extreme traffic congestion and shortages of parking spaces in downtown Incheon, impacting traffic. Alternative policies of the municipal government to address these issues, including road extension and improving public transportation, have not shown results because of the low satisfaction level of the public transportation service and limited transportation mode transfer owing to travel within the metropolitan area. Therefore, to improve the public transportation service, conducting a comprehensive analysis on the current service and improving its quality were deemed necessary. Additionally, adopting a demand response public transportation service was considered. In conjunction, objective and easy-to-use data should be used, so that if anyone repeats the procedure, the same result should be obtained. For this, we propose the simplest process. Thus, to introduce the service, this study presents a decision-making process by establishing a regional prioritizing methodology based on the transportation environment satisfaction level, average access time to major facilities, public transportation competitiveness, personal vehicle demand, and existing public transit routes. To assess the methodology feasibility and conformity, user satisfaction was analyzed in Jung-gu, Incheon. The analysis showed 91% user satisfaction, verifying that the demand response public transportation service was effectively supplied. This analysis process will be useful when applying and expanding new transportation services.