A Network Wide Study of Unfamiliar Public Transport Journey Patterns Using a Major Origin-Destination Survey

Increasing transit patronage is commonly perceived to be vital component of travel demand management programs that seek to reduce car dependence. It is important to understand the context of new transit travel to identify opportunities to attract and retain new users. This paper is the first large-scale, representative study of unfamiliar transit travel on an urban rail network. It uses a major origin-destination survey of nearly 24,000 rail passengers in Melbourne, Australia to determine that 2% of journeys by train is undertaken for the first time (representing some 10,000 journeys per weekday). Compared to familiar travel, a larger share of unfamiliar travel was undertaken in off-peak times and for a large variety of trip purposes whereas familiar travel was more dominated by commuting for work or education. The spatial distribution of unfamiliar travel was very similar to familiar travel, although it was slightly more likely to taken to destinations in the inner city and inner suburbs. Results suggest that efforts to improve the travel experience for new trips should be broadly distributed across the network and consider the broad variation in trip purpose and that unfamiliar travel often occurs at off-peak times. Policy implications and areas for future research are discussed.