Free-floating moped sharing systems are becoming more and more popular and provide new ways to travel inside urban areas. The vehicles offer the flexibility of one-way transportation, though the downside is that it creates a spatiotemporal imbalance of the vehicle distribution within the system. The operators of such systems are challenged to cope with this imbalance by either applying an operator-based relocation or user-based relocation strategy. As studies on operator-based relocation strategies are in abundance, this research focused on user-based relocation. A user-based relocation strategy assumes the participation of the user, though (monetary) incentives are required to encourage users to participate in the process of relocating vehicles. This research assessed how vehicle choice is influenced by these price deviations (dynamic pricing) through a context-related stated choice experiment. The dynamic pricing user-based relocation strategy was also tested on a real-life moped sharing system to assess the influence on the system performance. At last, an observed vehicle choice experiment was conducted to evaluate the trade-off by users between discounted vehicles and walking distance. The outcomes presented in this report ought to apply to other vehicle sharing systems with equal design and management configurations.

Automated driving systems (ADS) can improve traffic safety, improve accessibility and reduce environmental impact (Shladover, 2016). On the contrary, on May 7th 2016, a fatal accident with a Tesla on autopilot in U.S. Florida was a harsh reminder that the technology is still in its testing phase (Greenemeier, 2016). In complex technical systems like ADS technical failure may occur, which forms a serious threat to human well-being. Moreover, studies have shown that citizens are very concerned about deliberate misuse of ADS (Kyriakidis, Happee, & De Winter, 2015), e.g. people purposely abusing ADS to cause damage or even hurt someone. Therefore, according to many experts, the implementation of ADS does not only entail technical issues but also normative issues. To bridge the gap between technical- and normative issues, responsible innovation can be applied (Santoni de Sio, 2016). Friedman et. al. (2006) propose value-sensitive design to achieve responsible innovation via technical-, empirical- and conceptual research. As following from responsible innovation and value-sensitive design and in particular its focus on empirical research as one of its necessary elements, in this research an effort is made to use empirical research methods to provide more insights in normative issues of automated driving systems (ADS). The focus lies on social acceptance, particularly with respect to traffic safety. Also accessibility, environmental impact and heterogeneity among citizens will be analysed. Social acceptance is defined as “a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition (often a negative or uncomfortable situation) without attempting to change it, protest, or exit” (Fish, 2014, page 1). The following questions will be answered in this research: What is the social acceptance of automated driving systems from the perspective of safety, accessibility and environmental impact and what is the corresponding heterogeneity? 1. What percentage of citizens thinks automated driving systems are socially accepted? 2. How is the social acceptance influenced by safety, accessibility and environmental impact? 3. Are traffic fatalities caused by automated vehicles valued differently than current traffic fatalities? 4. Is there heterogeneity in the social acceptance among citizens? A survey is chosen as research method since it is a relatively inexpensive, flexible method to achieve extensive information about characteristics of a population. After an extensive theoretical analysis, seven attributes were identified that possibly influence the social acceptance: level of automation, road exemption, travel time, emissions, human error fatalities, technical failure fatalities and deliberate misuse fatalities. After the experiment was fine-tuned by a pilot study, it was held among a representative sample of 510 Dutch adults during the spring of 2017. The respondents had to state if they were in favour or against ADS for each of the twelve hypothetical futures that were presented to them. In these hypothetical futures, the attributes were systematically varied and described as a change to the current situation. Using a MNL RUM model, the results show that 63% of all citizens prefer ADS over the current system. It is therefore concluded that citizens have a high social acceptance and thus are rather positive towards ADS. Also, citizens prefer a system where human drivers are still in control and can intervene in case necessary. Next, it is concluded that the social acceptance is mostly influenced by fatalities caused by automated vehicles (AVs), while travel time is the least important attribute. However, the differences in influence of the attributes were not substantial. Safety, accessibility and environmental impact are all important for the social acceptance. Nevertheless, technical failure fatalities weigh as much as 4 human error fatalities. For deliberate misuse fatalities this is a factor 5.5. Although these relations coincide with literature, the magnitude is larger than expected. It implies that ADS have to be very safe in order to reach social acceptance. Since AVs are still ‘learning’ how to drive, this might cause problems for current and future experiments. A latent class choice model is estimated to answer the final research question. Results show that large heterogeneity exists among citizens in the social acceptance. Citizens can be segmented into three classes (% of citizens): automated driving enthusiasts (32%), central mass (52%) and risk-averse class (16%). Contradictory to average citizens, automated driving enthusiasts prefer high automation levels. Even so, they still weigh fatalities caused by AVs as much as 3 human error fatalities on average. The central mass shows similar results to the results of the MNL model estimated on the full sample. The risk-averse class has a strong dislike for fatalities caused by AVs. This class weighs technical failure fatalities (deliberate misuse fatalities) as much as 5.5 (10) human error fatalities. In conclusion, primarily two discrepancies are identified that are critical for the implementation of ADS: 1) High social acceptance versus strong dislike for fatalities caused by AVs; 2) Citizens who are enthusiastic about ADS versus citizens who are risk-averse. They lead to the following recommendations: The social acceptance for ADS is high, so it is recommended for policy makers to have a positive and active approach towards ADS. By conducting experiments for professional users, safety risks can be minimalized while a learning curve is ensured. Also technology producers and policy makers should intensify research into cooperate driving. According to experts, ADS and cooperate driving are inseparable (Shladover, 2016), but globally the research into cooperate driving is lacking (Roland Berger, 2017). Since cooperate driving can lead to an increased risk of deliberate misuse, it is deemed critical for the implementation of ADS. Next, policy makers and especially the RDW should review the licensing of AVs. Currently, hardly any restrictions are in place for the licensing of AVs, which can cause dangerous situations on public roads. Finally, information campaigns can help to make citizens aware of the risks and benefits of ADS.

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is a new concept that is expected to make multi-modal travel more seamless, by integrating a variety of different transport modes on a platform, accessible on demand for which monthly bundles can be bought. The hopes of MaaS are that due to the simplicity of the service, and the plethora of alternatives being offered, the need to own a car decreases. As car use starts from car ownership and public transport is regarded as the backbone of MaaS more sustainable travel should be promoted. The expected positive impacts that are being attributed to the implementation of MaaS are however not self-evident. Little empirical evidence is available that supports the effectiveness of MaaS on reaching its attributed goals. This research assesses the effects of MaaS bundles on changing travel behavior of travelers in the Netherlands. Two experiments were integrated into one, namely a stated adaptation experiment, and a stated choice experiment. It was found that the effects of MaaS bundles on improving sustainability and reducing congestion will be very limited. Bundles are currently not likely to be adopted by the people that are thought of as desirable potential adopters. Moreover, bundles are not yet conceived of as viable alternatives for car-ownership by car-owners. Nonetheless, this research showed that MaaS has the potential to change travel behavior. These results thus suggest that MaaS bundles may in fact be used as a mobility management tool in order to stimulate certain travel behavior, but that other ways of diffusion have to be considered instead of adoption by the market.

The rise of e-commerce makes shopping easier than ever. It also puts pressure on logistic service providers, their employees, traffic and the environment. Parcel deliveries to service points or parcel lockers could release some of this pressure. However, service points are only scarcely used by Dutch consumers, while parcel lockers still lack a dense network. In addition, it is unclear how Dutch consumers can be persuaded to use these options more, and what kind of travel mode they will use for their parcel pick-ups. Two stated choice experiments were constructed to find out which factors influence Dutch consumer preferences for different delivery methods as well as the choice for a travel mode to pick-up a parcel. The results indicate that delivery prices and delivery moments are important factors that influence consumer choices for a delivery option. Several background characteristics, like age and current e-shopping behaviour, also have an influence. For the pick-up mode choices, distance and weight were most important. Here current travel behaviour plays a large role as well. There is potential in setting prices and delivery moments such that the self-pickup methods are used more. Building a dense parcel locker network can further accelerate this, and will also favour pick-up modes like walking and cycling. Future research should, therefore, focus on the complex situation in the Dutch parcel market, in order to analyse how more collaboration between the different parties in this sector can be improved such that prices, delivery moment and distances to pick-up points favour pick-up methods more.

Tradable Peak Credits (TPC) is a new instrument to reduce congestion. It is expected to have a higher public support than traditional road pricing. So far, research has mainly been conducted into behavioral effects and effects on the road network of implementing such systems. This study investigates the public support for TPC and how this support is influenced by the design of the TPC system by means of a stated choice experiment. It was shown that TPC does not have a higher public support than a congestion charge and a kilometer charge as was hypothesized. Also, it was shown how different groups of variables influence the support for TPC. Furthermore, public preferences regarding the design of a TPC system were revealed. Recommendations are made for further research on TPC and for policymakers. The stated choice experiment was also used to investigate to what extent variations in communication medium and content influence the outcomes of the experiment.

The value of travel time saving(VOTTS) is very important in cost benefit analysis(CBA) as it is used to calculate the monetary gain in case of an improvement in transport that leads to reduction in travel time. Although it is easy to directly calculate monetary gains due to a speed improvement, monetary gains due to transport service improvement like comfort or ability to perform useful activities during a trip are far more difficult to include in CBA. This is because the total travel time stays the same before and after such service improvement since there is no visible reduction in total travel time. This is of course not true because travelers who travel comfortably and are able to engage in productive and pleasant activities during their trip can derive some benefits from the trip. These benefits can have an impact on the traveler’s VOTTS e.g. a reduction in the VOTTS of the traveler. In order to measure this impact and calculate the monetary value of activities, a new methodology is proposed. The intuition behind the method is that the same traveler might have two different VOTTS. One VOTTS when he/she is able to make productive or pleasant use of the travel time by engaging in a preferred activity and another VOTTS when he/she cannot engage in the preferred activity during the journey. If the VOTTS without the activity is higher than the VOTTS with the activity, then the difference between these two VOTTS can be conceptualized as the monetary value of the activity. The proposed methodology was translated into a hypothetical stated choice experiment with in-vehicle time and cost attributes. Respondents were recruited from train travellers on Netherlands Railways(NS) panel. The VOTTS of respondents with and without the ability to perform their preferred activity was then calculated. The results show that the ability to perform certain preferred activities like reading, working and listening to music during train trips, reduces the VOTTS especially for commuters by about 5euros/hour. For leisure travellers, reading was found to reduce the VOTTS by about 3euros/hr. The research concludes with a discussion on the general implication of results for transport project evaluations and investments. Based on this, some recommendations are made for NS and also for the Netherlands institute for transport policy analysis(KiM) regarding future VOTTS calculations that will be used in transport project evaluations.

This study's objective is to assess the effect of parking arrangements and the physical environment of a car restricted residential area on car owners’ willingness to move to a car restricted residential area compared to a conventional residential area. A car restricted area in this study is distinguished as a visually car-free area, in which access to vehicles is restricted and car parking is either provided in-building, underground or at the edge of the neighbourhood, but there is no attempt to restrict car use or ownership. The preferences regarding seven variables affecting car restricted residential choice were studied: (1) walking time to the car, (2) type of car parking facility, (3) monthly parking costs, (4) type of building, (5) liveliness level, (6) amount of facilities, and (7) the degree of green areas. A stated preference (SP) survey was used to determine which characteristics affect this preference, and to what extent. The results indicate that only a few car owners are willing to move to a car restricted residential area over a conventional residential area. Overall, the walking time to car parking significantly harms to the willingness to move to a car restricted residential area, while the physical environment of a car restricted residential seems to be of less importance. This implies that the physical environment is only to a limitate extent able to compensate for distant car parking in these residential areas. However, future research may increase the understanding into car owners’ willingness to move to a car restricted residential area by scrutinising people’s underlying association towards car restricted residential areas.

Worldwide, material consumption has expanded rapidly. The Netherlands has become wealthier, citizens can afford more products and therefore the amount of municipal solid waste (MSW) increased enormously. The distribution of MSW is associated with environmental problems and health risks. MSW consists of everyday items disposed by households, such as furniture, clothing, electronics, food and product packaging. A large share of these products are not only suited for recycling but could also be re-used. The step from recycling towards re-use is desired as re-use is more sustainable and effective in reducing the associated (environmental) problems and risks than recycling. However, current local waste management systems are not equipped for re-use. Facilities to handle re-use already exist. The main problem is, that the MSW products are in most cases not ending up at these facilities because the current local waste management systems are designed to stimulate recycling instead of re-use. Re-use is solely in the hands of the citizens themselves. There is insufficient knowledge of what kind of re-use policies are preferred by different citizens. The policy-makers do not know about the trade-offs citizens make regarding re-use. Therefore, this research aims to find what the preferences of the citizens are regarding re-use measures of MSW, and if these preferences are heterogeneous among the citizens or not. The results of the research showed that citizens were willing to change from the current system towards re-use of MSW. In 80% of the choice situations, a re-use measure was chosen over the base alternative (current situation). This is a positive result as re-use can diminish waste levels and indirectly the negative effects associated with waste. Citizens preferred the “Platform” and “Bringing to the waste disposal centre” alternative the most and preferred these two measures more than the base alternative (current situation). The preferences were related to multiple citizen characteristics such as age, ability to bring (small and big) products to the waste disposal centre, and having a divers’ license

In this thesis the Dutch consumer’ trade-off between hydrogen fuel cell technology and battery electric vehicles has been studied and identified which policy factors are effective to enable a FCEV breakthrough in the Netherlands. The consumer trade-off between different vehicle attributes is estimated by applying a discrete choice experiment and using the choice data to build a discrete choice model. A multinomial logit model was used to estimate the taste coefficients and based on this obtained coefficients the attribute importance is estimated. In order to understand the importance of policy factors we simulated different policy options to assess the impact on the market shares of FCEVs and BEVs. Finally, policy recommendation are made based on the policy effectiveness and its cost-effectiveness and feasibility.

This research examines the incorporation of morality in discrete choice modelling, applied to the specific case of the choice for ADAS in lease cars. Implicitly, the decision to include or exclude ADAS in a car affects the safety of the driver himself and other road users. Therefore this decision has a moral dimension; a moral dilemma arises during the trade-off between safety, comfort, and investments in ADAS. This research describes a stated preference experiment in which respondents choose between different option packages for lease cars. The target respondents need to make trade-offs between costs, comfort, and safety provided by ADAS. The results show that an increased perceived safety and comfort for the driver/passengers are both more preferred than an increased perceived safety for other road users. Also, the results show that innate morality plays an important role in these preferences, which is tested regarding five moral foundations. Furthermore, a booster that aims at increasing moral choice behaviour is tested, which results to have the opposite effect.

The promises of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) are generous, researchers and policymakers repeatedly present MaaS as a Holy Grail. MaaS has the potential to play a role in addressing issues as pollution, congestion and crowded cities. However, without interested users, these promises cannot be fulfilled. This study explores whether the proposed expectations of MaaS are realistic by examining the interest of potential users in MaaS. The focus is on employees in the Netherlands. Commuting trips might make an interesting first market for MaaS since there are possibilities to increase the interest of employees by financing commuting MaaS trips by employers. A latent class cluster analysis is performed to identify groups of employees based on the attitude towards and the intention to use MaaS for commuting trips. The results indicate that the majority of employees are not interested in using MaaS to commute. An increase in interest is seen when employers finance MaaS. However, this increase is not substantial. The interested groups of employees are individuals with high environmental consciousness and low car affection which often travel in a multi-modal way. This research concludes that the benefits of MaaS that are proposed by researchers and policymakers are overestimated. However, this does not imply that the MaaS concept should be discarded. The MaaS platform might be of added value for some travellers since it provides new travel options in case of unexpected disruptions and an easy and clear way of booking and paying for a door-to-door trip. For now, it is important to present MaaS in a more realistic way instead of the Holy Grail.

This paper investigates the kilometer charge and the potential effects of emission-based differentiation, how this policy is supported among Dutch citizens and how it affects different groups. It investigates the behavioural change caused by the new policy using Dutch stated preference discrete choice data. Two stated choice experiments are performed, one exploring the demand for privately used alternative fuel vehicles and one on the modal shift for one-person trips with varying distances. A mixed logit model was applied to determine to what extent specific groups were price-sensitive to the kilometer charge. We find that well-educated,high-income people, who either frequently use their car or own a business car, are more incentivised by the kilometer charge to purchase alternative fuel vehicles. In general, people value purchase prices over the kilometer charge and range. Moreover, it turns out that these groups are willing to purchase a substantially more expensive car in exchange for a lower variable kilometer charge. By applying a multinomial logit model for all distances in the mode choice experiment, we find that the least sensitive group towards the kilometer charge for a modal shift are high-educated, older, commuting car users that live relatively far away from the nearest train station. Furthermore, the larger the travel distance, the higher The value of travel time savings ranges from 4.44 - 14.00 euro for distances including train and car whilst small city trips with bike and car as mode alternatives have a value of 6.86 euro. The found behavioural effects were used to evaluate the impact of constructed scenarios with varying tariffs for the kilometer charge, ultimately showing that an emission-based differentiation can positively affect tax income and emission savings. Besides that, this implementation form is the most supported by the Dutch population. In addition to these substantial insights, this paper makes a contribution by showing how stated preference discrete choice data can enhance the decision-making of such pricing policies.

This research has the goal to analyse the influence of neighbourhood characteristics on people’s willingness to adopt Mobility as a Service (MaaS) instead of the car for new residential areas. It estimated the influence of a reduced parking comfort, MaaS-hub availability and aditional quality of the overall neighbourhood on the willingness to adopt MaaS instead of the car and the total attractiveness of new residential areas. It used a Stated Choice experiment and survey to estimate a MNL- and ML-model for both one and multiple car households. The results indicate that MaaS adoption rates are limited. MaaS only seems a niche market for people with multiple cars and as neighbourhoods with a larger hub at the border near public transport facilities combined with multiple small scale neighbourhood hubs with only shared cars and bikes.

This study aims to explore the preferences of citizens regarding fairness considerations related to the distribution of the effects of road safety policies in order to provide with policy recommendations that will help to promote more fair road safety policies. To achieve this aim the Discrete Choice Approach is going to be followed, using stated preference data. This requires a Stated Preference experiment to be conducted, which consists of two distinct parts. The first part is related to the citizen’s perception of fairness of different types of distribution of the effects of road safety policies, while the second one is related with the importance of this perceived fairness in the preference of citizens over specific road safety policy alternatives. In the first case, two Linear Regression models have been estimated, while for the second case, three Discrete Choice models. This study has shown that the Discrete Choice Approach can actually give some insight to moral dilemmas as it is suggested in literature. It also showed that low public acceptance can be a show-stopper for road safety policies, thus looking only at the aggregate effects of a road safety policy can be often misleading. The way that the effects of road safety policies are distributed among different groups of people can have a significant influence on the public acceptance of road safety policies.

As one of the largest innovation hubs in the world, the Brainport Eindhoven region experiences significant economic and population growth. However, with this success comes a challenge: the transportation infrastructure is increasingly strained, with new housing developments and population growth escalating the transport demand. The economic growth includes plans by hightech giant ASML to roughly double its workforce in Veldhoven to 35,000 by 2030, which poses significant consequences for accessibility, environmental quality, and safety unless effective policy measures are implemented...

The implementation of a bus system is an attractive alternative for decision makers since it has a short lead time and the service can be easily adapted depending on the demand. Due to the flexible nature it allows for the use of fulfilling different magnitudes of demand. Usually bus service provide a lower level quality service, however busses can be configured in such a way that they also provide higher level of service up until a point where they compete with rail systems. In the Netherlands referred to as HOV (“Hoogwaardig Openbaar Vervoer”, high-level public transport). This is a large spectrum with many different configurations. One should still consider the need for a HOV bus service as it comes with extra investment costs compared with the regular bus. Therefore, this research was looking into where there is no difference in valuation between a regular bus line and a higher level of service bus line. Through interviews, analysis of current lines and looking into what decision makers promise as a higher level of service attributes could be defined which could be seen as characteristic for a higher level service bus service. Additionally, the commuters perspective played a important role as most literature mostly considered only the decision makers perspective. A method has been demonstrated which shows how commuter needs can be used as and translated to operational characteristics with which decision makers specify, plan and design current and future higher level of service bus lines. The method includes a MNL model which expresses the valuation of the characteristics attributes of high level bus services which allows for the prediction of the modal split between a bus service and the current commute. This gave insight on which attributes a differently valued between a regular bus and a HOV bus and when a HOV bus service is equally valued as a regular bus service, hence not justifying investments in a higher level service. It was found that in most cases the HOV bus service results in a higher modal split despite of having a lower valuation for most of the characteristic attributes. The commuter seems to have more trust in the reliability promoted by higher level bus services.

Tourists travelling by airplane contribute significantly to the CO2 emissions. The number of flights covering longer distances is rising and, consequently, implies more energy consumption. This leads to a greater environmental impact compared to flights covering shorter distances. Although people are expected to continue travelling, adjusting the holiday destinations and modes of transport can effectively reduce the environmental footprint of tourism, all while maintaining pleasurable travel experiences. To minimize CO2 emissions by adjusting holiday destinations, destinations closer to home should be chosen. A trade-off seems to appear when selecting a holiday destination, involving a balance between the attractiveness of a specific destination and the different travel-related considerations. More attractive destinations can be reached with increasing distances, yet this also increases travel time and cost which are both preferred to be minimized. So far, research into the value of distance in this trade-off in the context of holiday destination choices is found to be limited. Therefore, this research studies how people value distance, controlling for travel time and travel cost, when choosing the destination for their holiday to gain a more comprehensive understanding of tourism travel behaviour. Since long-distance flights have larger CO2 emissions compared to flying over shorter distances, this study compares distances for holiday destinations that require long-distance flights with flights covering shorter distances. Additionally, these results can lead to interesting insights for policymakers. The main research question examined in this study is: ‘What is the value of physical distance for Dutch tourists in the choice of their summer holiday destination?’ For this study, a stated preference survey was created to collect data for addressing the research question, resulting in a sample of 254 Dutch tourists. To understand if distance holds intrinsic value, once controlling for travel time and for travel cost, and to investigate if the value of distance would change when travel time and cost are considered, two versions of a stated choice experiment are included in the survey. The respondents are randomly assigned to one of the choice experiments, resulting in half of the respondents completing one version while the other half completing the other. Since people prefer different types of holidays, including all attractiveness attributes in choice sets may lead to many immediate ’no-go’ options. Therefore, the survey started with an additional experiment for all respondents. In this experiment, the respondents rated the attractiveness of different holiday destinations on a 10-point rating scale. A regression model was estimated based on the observed ratings. This gives an indication of the attractiveness of holiday destinations. To investigate the intrinsic value of distance and if the value of distance changes considering travel time and cost, the results of the two versions of the choice experiments are estimated with a Multinomial Logit model. When comparing the results of both versions it was found that in version Choice experiment presenting all attributes a very small positive value exists, so small that it can be negligible. This suggests that once controlling for travel time and costs, there is no intrinsic value in distance. This was unexpected as it was expected that further distances would have a positive influence on the utility...

Limiting climate change forces us to switch to a more sustainable mobility. Travelling by train is more sustainable. Night trains might be a solution, they over several advantages such as a higher comfort level and can travel long-distances during the night. However, there currently is no knowledge about the Willingness to Use night trains. This study is the first into this Willingness to Use night trains, as an alternative for flying, for long-distance European travel. To do so, this paper makes use of two Stated-Preference experiments. A comfort rating experiment, in which the comfort rating is the dependent variable. In this experiment, it is explored to which extent night train characteristics influence the ’perceived comfort’ rating. In the mode choice experiment, it is in turn investigated how this comfort rating is traded-off against more traditional mode choice attributes such as trip time and trip costs. The study presents the results of linear regression and a Panel Mixed Logit model, estimated on 804 collected responses in the Netherlands. The results of both models are combined to derive Willingness-to-Pay values for an improvement in one of the comfort attributes, given an initial comfort level. Furthermore, several segments were identified using a latent class choice model. At last, the Willingness to Use the night train is explored for several scenarios. It is shown that when the night train is introduced as-is, it is predicted to have a market share of about 60%. Positioning the night train as a low-cost competitor results in a significant drop in market share.

Rail vehicle valuation is traditionally performed by taking the book value of a vehicle, complemented with a deviation factor for technical characteristics and condition based on the experience of an appraiser. This process is costly and time-consuming for large and/or spread-out fleets and creates financial risks for all parties involved in the transaction through under- or overpricing. To develop more automated and digital approaches to enable more rapid and in-depth economic and financial analysis, insight is needed in the relationship between vehicle value and its determinants. This research aims to identify the main determinants of rolling stock value, and describes – in both economic and statistical terms – the dependence of value on these factors where possible. It reveals that the traditional linear approach to vehicle appraissal does not capture the non-linear effects found between various determinants and vehicle value for both locomotives and freight wagons.

The development of automated vehicles offers advantages for the transportation systems of the future. As a result, new and unknown challenges within the field of transportation arise. Moreover, there are uncertainties within the behavioural responses of travellers and amongst other things, the changes in the modal split within the transportation market. There is a lack of extensive knowledge of public transport user preferences regarding automated vehicles. In this study, the relative preferences for a trip with a self-driving bus were compared to a trip with a regular bus. To establish this, a stated preference experiment was conducted. Based on the responses of 282 respondents, a mixed logit model including latent variables was estimated. Based on the estimation results, it can be concluded that public transport users currently show a lower preference for the self-driving bus than for the regular bus. Moreover, travellers’ preferences to travel on the autonomous bus improve when no surveillance is present. Travellers with an increased level of trust are found to perceive more utility of a self-driving bus. This effect is stronger for women, which could explain the outcome that women are less likely to travel by autonomous bus than men. These relative preferences result in the self-driving bus being a competitive alternative for short urban trips, which allow for the increase of the travel costs for the self-driving bus compared to the travel costs for the regular bus. At last, the estimation and application outcomes of this study provide an increased understanding of the stated preferences of public transport users for self-driving vehicles operated as public transport services for urban trips.