Critical factors determining public transport access level in Abuja federal capital territory of Nigeria

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the key factors which determine access to public transport service in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) of Nigeria. Data were collected based on ten public transport access levels indicators namely: Safety, transport fare, bus availability, comfort level, speed on transit, delays at parks, bus stops and on transit highway, adherence to estimated arrival time, adherence to estimated departure time, reliability of bus schedules and bus overloading. Data on these factors were collected from administration of questionnaires to 859 public transport commuters in 17 major road transport terminals across the FCT. The data were analysed using the factor analysis, correlation, and regression method. The result shows that three factors namely, adherence to estimated departure time, fare charged by the operators, and reliability of bus schedules on routes together explained about 54% of the cumulative total variance, leaving the remaining 46% to seven other factors and residuals. The Spearman's rank correlation matrix for all the variables indicates that they were all positively correlated at various degrees. The standardized coefficient of the regression analysis revealed that, bus service reliability is the major determinant of public transport access level in the study area. In order to raise the current access level of commuters to public transport in FCT, operators must improve on the level of service in line with the three critical factors which the study has identified.