Student Perceptions of MAT Services

This section of the report focuses on the student respondent's perceptions about the quality of MAT transit system services. The quality of service is measured by responding to the following questions: the benefits of public transit, whether students have used MAT, why students use MAT, what keeps students from using MAT, what MAT characteristics were important, what their last experience was like, how long students were willing to wait for MAT, willingness to use MAT for Tri-College attendance and willingness to pay for MAT services. This type of investigation reflects real perceptions about the services offered by MAT. Some of these are tangible items that MAT administration can react to, or at least be aware of, when designing promotional campaigns and organizing routes.

There are many benefits to public transportation. The students were given the following list of benefits and were asked which were the most important to them: 1) safety, 2) convenience, 3) reduced traffic congestion, 4) environmental concerns, 5) saving time, 6) saving money, and 7) reduced parking demand for the slots. On the NDSU campus, reduced parking demand is seen as the most important benefit for public transit (Figure 4.13). Environmental concerns were fifth in importance for NDSU students. This seems to be a more important issue at other universities. Emissions from commuter traffic by individuals' vehicles going to and from work is one of the leading causes of the decline in air quality from the production of dioxides by our vehicles. (Campus Transit 2000: Analyzing Student Attitudes ) As the community's population continues to grow, environmental issues may assume a higher profile.

Four issues that may be beneficial for the NDSU Circulator to publicize as benefits to using public transit are reduced parking demand, reduced traffic congestion, saving money, and convenience. Reduced parking demand and traffic congestion are the two major benefits to transit use by NDSU students. This indicates how issues and problems within local communities dictate the reasons people use transit.

Students indicated that reducing parking demand was the most common reason for using MAT . NDSU receives from MAT the total ridership numbers for each month. However, those numbers do not reflect the percent of student body that may have ridden the MAT bus. Survey results show that 19.88 percent of the student body have ridden the MAT bus (Figure 4.14). Projecting that percentage to the entire student body would mean approximately (11,146 x 19.88 = 2216) 2,216 students have ridden the MAT bus. Whether students live on or off campus does not influence the percentage of students using MAT. The results do show that 42.9 percent of the graduate students have used the MAT bus, while 15.8 percent of the freshmen and sophomores and 18.3 percent of the juniors and seniors have used the MAT bus.

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: to get around campus, to go to and from campus, going to another campus, shopping, going to and from work, and visiting family and friends. The response, "to get to and from campus," was the leading reason for using MAT. The convenience of getting around campus was the second reason. This signals that MAT routes should focus on getting services to the students who go from home to campus. As was noted, 47.3 percent of the students living off-campus live two or more miles from campus. A much higher percentage of students who work on campus use MAT - 32.8 percent; those who work off campus - 16.4 percent; and of those who are not employed, 12.9 percent use MAT.

The students were to identify the reasons that keep them from riding MAT. We provided six potential reasons and asked students to indicate how strongly they agreed, or disagreed on a scale of 1 to 5. The Likert scale is 1 to 5 where 1=strongly agree, 2=agree, 3=neutral, 4=disagree, and 5= strongly disagree. The selected reasons were: 1) preference to drive or walk, 2) buses are not "cool," 3) lack of information, 4) lack of routes to destinations, 5) unreliability, and 6) rides taking too long.

Figure 4.16 shows respondents who strongly agreed (shown in the first section of the bar) agreed (shown in the second section of the bar), or were neutral (shown in the third section of the bar). The primary reason students do not ride transit is their desire to drive, walk or ride bicycle. These modes tend to offer the students more freedom to go directly where they choose. The second reason is the rides take too long. This suggests that MAT has to look for the most direct routes possible for students and work on developing realistic customer expectations. Lack of information is the third most mentioned reason for not riding the MAT transit system in the community.

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, less stress than driving, convenience, comfortable ride, friendly drivers, arriving on time, environmental friendliness and serving the Fargo-Moorhead area. The respondents could agree, be neutral or disagree with the characteristic statements. The following were the four most important ridership characteristics that NDSU students valued from MAT:

• free service,
• larger than campus service,
• being reliable, and
• environmental friendliness.

It can be noted from this survey that all of these characteristics have a great deal of value to the MAT customers at NDSU. MAT should look at promoting these benefits, noting the importance of paying for service by some indirect revenue source, the importance of timeliness, and emphasizing there are fewer emissions from transit than from individual cars in morning and evening commutes.

It is helpful to be aware of how customers perceive their previous MAT service experiences. This section tells us what the customers value, and if MAT services are living up to its customer's expectations. MAT received the lowest rating for meeting schedules, which means either they are late or they are giving the customers incorrect information. Providing a clean bus is a customer expectation that MAT is close to achieving. MAT received high ratings for buses being easy to use.

In the transit business, buses are always trying to make schedules. This is important because many people have definite time schedules they are following. Americans live in a fast-paced society and are not willing to wait very long. A wait of more than 15 minutes will have a huge negative affect on ridership (Figure 4.19). The fact that buses may run behind schedule causes anxiety for people with full agendas.

One of the main factors that determine the value of a service is if the customer is willing to pay and how much is he or she is willing to pay for the service. The fact that more than 47 percent of the survey respondents are willing to pay $10 or more for MAT services reveals high appreciation for the services.

The survey contained three questions regarding the Tri-College system. First, students were asked if they plan to take Tri-College courses. If they responded yes, the second question they were asked is if the courses would be during the daytime or evening. Third, the students were asked if they would take MAT to attend these courses. Nine percent (152 respondents) of the surveyed students intend to take Tri-College courses next year. If that number is projected out over the whole student body (11,146 x .0919 = 1,024), that equates to approximately 1,024 students. The majority plan to take daytime classes (79.6 percent); 46 percent indicated they would use MAT to attend Tri-College courses; and 25.7 percent indicated "maybe." It is difficult to project Tri-College ridership because of many uncertainties in students' schedules. Minnesota State University of Moorhead (MSUM) and Concordia students may want to use the MAT bus for Tri-College courses, thereby increasing ridership.

We learned from this set of questions that students tend to use MAT more for going to and from campus and going to and from classes on campus. It is important for the buses to have the free pass for the students, serve the Fargo-Moorhead area, be reliable or on time, and there is also some value in being environmentally friendly. MAT buses are clean and easy to use, according to customers' evaluations. The two main reasons students do not use MAT is they prefer to walk, drive or bike, and that MAT takes too long. The majority of people are willing to wait up to 15 minutes for the MAT buses, and 47 percent of the respondents would be willing to spend $10 for MAT services. The main reasons for using public transit are to reduce parking demand and reduce traffic congestion. The answers to these questions gave insight to ways MAT can improve services.