ABSTRACT
The research examines public transport fare variability and commuter’s behavior in Egor Local Government Area of Edo State. The study brought to the fore the relevance of public transport system in spatial interaction process in the movement of human and material goods across the geographical space. Survey method was adopted using the instrument of questionnaire to elicit information from the target population which made up of commuters who employ the services of public transport system. The research objectives were posited to examine the reasons for the utilization of public transport system: factors responsible for fare variability: transport fare challenges face by commuters: assessment of the satisfaction level derive from public transport system: examine commuters coping strategies in response to transport fare variability. The socio-demographic profile shows a target population sampled of 53.2% male and 46.8% female which provides a clear gender-based perspective views into the possible reasons and challenges of fare variability. Thus, in testing the stated hypothesis 1, Kendall coefficient of concordance (W) was used to ascertain the most preferred reason for the usage of public transport system. The output result of the Kendall shows that work, school, market, and worship centres were highly rated as the most reasons for use of public transport system. However, the purpose of using it to work with a mean rank of 2.19 indicates that majority of the commuters engage the services of public transport for work purpose. The Kendall (W) 0.095 depicts a reasonable level of agreement with a significance p value (Aspmp. Sig is 0.000001), which shows that the level of concordance (agreement) is statistically significant (P<0.05).Thus, on public transport challenges it was observed that most commuters would have to wait between 5-10 minutes before they could get vehicle as well as the same time duration before they could get to their destinations. Meanwhile, 80.0% of commuters acknowledged the fact of experiencing delay in accessing transportation while 82.9% acknowledged to the fact of transport fare variability challenge in the area. More so, hypothesis 2 was posited to determine the mean difference in fare charge when there are extraneous conditions such rainfall, traffic congestion, rush hour period, bad road and when these conditions do not exist, using t-test statistical analysis. The test statistics show a significance mean difference in fare charge (p<0.05). However, commuters outlined rainfall, rush-hour, traffic congestion, evening public transport operation, bad road, as extraneous conditions under which they often experience temporal variability in transport fare. Thus, ordinal logistic regression was used to test hypothesis 3, in order to ascertain which of the extraneous conditions (rush-hour, rainfall, traffic congestion, late evening transport operation) have a high likelihood on fare variability with reference to bad road (referent category). Therefore, all the conditions were observed to have a positive association with variability in transport fare of which rush-hour happened to be statistically significant. on satisfaction level with respect to fare variability majority of the respondents were observed to be dissatisfied (see figure 4,7). The study reveals that commuters adopt different coping strategies in meeting with fare variability In conclusion, it has been observed that fare variability in Egor Local Government Area of Edo state is a serious issue to commuters, a burden they have to bear, with no foreseeable solution. As part of policy measure it becomes imperative for government to set up regulatory modalities to check the tendency of these public transport operators to vary fare charge.
