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Transportation Seminar Series
Longitudinal Analysis of Changes in the Behavior and Attitudes of College Undergraduates Toward Public Transportation: First and Second Wave Findings

Oct 27, 2008 (3:00 - 4:00 p.m., IACC 422)

Understanding the attitudes and perceptions of a community's members towards public transportation is valuable when designing and delivering service. In this paper, the design and descriptive statistics for the first two waves of a longitudinal study of students enrolled at North Dakota State University are presented. The use of a longitudinal as opposed to a traditional cross-sectional survey instrument provides the ability to identify individual changes in attitudes and behaviors instead of relying on aggregate results, which often mask important differences that occur over time. Analysis of first-year data using a binary probit model finds that vehicle access, on-campus residence, prior transit use when traveling, and use of transit by family and friends significantly influence ridership behavior. Ridership by members of the survey cohort increased from 33% during their freshman year to 45% during their sophomore year.

David Ripplinger, Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute – NDSU

David Ripplinger is an associate research fellow at the Small Urban & Rural Transit Center (SURTC), a research group affiliated with the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute and North Dakota State University. Mr. Ripplinger's research in transit has focused on a number of areas including technology adoption, coordination, student and university transportation, and transportation economics. He is a member of the Paratransit and Transportation Economics Committees of the Transportation Research Board. He received his master's degree from Iowa State and is currently in the Ph.D. program in Transportation & Logistics at North Dakota State University.

NDSU Dept 2880P.O. Box 6050Fargo, ND 58108-6050
(701)231-7767ndsu.ugpti@ndsu.edu