This paper reports a study of the effects of various types of reduction of public transport provision in The Netherlands. The study focused on: (1) different user groups; (2) different reduction measures; and (3) different reactions to reduction measures. Passengers were interviewed on bus journeys, while travelling on urban and rural bus lines with a low occupancy. If they agreed to take part in the study, they were then interviewed extensively at home. They were asked about: (1) characteristics of their recent bus journey; (2) car ownership and licence holding; (3) reactions to different reduction measures, recorded using a stated preference method; and (4) personal and household characteristics. Five user groups were household characteristics. Five user groups were defined, according to their degree of dependency on public transport. Five different hypothetical reduction measures were presented to the respondents, who were asked to indicate their reactions to each of these measures. For each reduction method, analysis of variance showed significant differences between the user groups. Reduction of the level of a low-occupancy bus service could be expected to bring high probabilities of buying or using a car for small user groups, and low probabilities for large user groups.
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