The impact of bus rapid transit design choices on ridership and occupancy: Dutch recipes for success

• Comparison of in total 141 bus services to find out what combinatory characteristics impact ridership and occupancy. • Introduction of a method novel to the field of public transport that can be used for interdisciplinary research. • Introduction of the dipswitch diagram to visualise design and performance differences in bus configurations. • An identification of issues for further interdisciplinary research. In designing a bus rapid transit (BRT) system, various design choices are made. This article introduces a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) approach to examine the effectiveness of combinations of BRT characteristics (design choices) and their impact on ridership and occupancy . Robust factors for ridership in most configurations are, in line with expectations, offering a high frequency and easily accessible vehicles. Branding as a special tire is in some contexts like services around airports or campuses, not part of effective configurations in terms of ridership. However, success in generating higher average trip occupancy levels is achieved with coaches that are branded as a higher level of service. These regional services that fill in gaps in rail, combine long stop spacings with a shorter headway during morning peak hours. Based on enhanced bus services with a wide variety of BRT characteristics (n = 141), the followed method can be considered as a first step. To obtain more specific results, it is recommendable to narrow down the focus to bus services that have more characteristics in common. This study underlines once more that gaining ridership with enhanced bus services, is more than just offering a service in high frequencies.