Student Perceptions of MAT Services
This section of the report focuses on the student respondent's perceptions of the quality of MAT transit system services.
There are many benefits to using public transportation. The following (Figure 11) is a list of benefits the students identified as most important to them including reduced parking demand, save money, reduce traffic congestion, environmental concerns convenience, safety, save time, and no opinion.
Figure 11. Benefits to Riding Public Transportation (n=89)
The following (Figure 12) are the student respondents who use MAT services. Less than 20 percent of respondents indicated that they use MAT services.
Figure 12. Students Using MAT (n=476)
An important issue is what motivates students to use MAT. Survey respondents were asked to state their most important reasons for using MAT from among the following choices (Figure 13).
Figure 13. Reasons Students Use MAT (n=387)
SURTC asked students to identify the reasons that keep them from riding MAT. We provided potential reasons and asked students to indicate how strongly they agreed, were neutral or disagreed. The primary reason students do not ride transit is their desire to drive, walk, or ride bicycle (Figure 14).
Figure 14. What Influences the Mode of Travel (n=387)
The characteristics of transit services that are important to customers are analyzed next. To accomplish this we looked at a number of value characteristics such as free service, convenience, friendly drivers, and environmentally friendly characteristics. Friendly drivers, reliable, free and serves the Fargo/Moorhead area were the greatest agreed upon characteristics among respondents (Figure 15).
Figure 15. Characteristic Values of Public Transportation (n-89)
It is helpful to be aware of how customers perceive their previous MAT service experiences. Arriving reasonably on-time was the worst experience indicated by respondents as less than 70 percent felt MAT buses were reasonably on-time (Figure 16).
Figure 16. Explanation of Experiences (n=89)
In the transit industry, wait times for customers are of utmost importance. According to respondents, a wait time longer than 15 minutes will have a negative influence on ridership (Figure 17).
Figure 17. Willful Wait Time for MAT Bus (n=387)