Promoting Public and Collective Transportation for Students: A Case Study of Secondary and Intermediate Education Schools in Brack Municipality – Libya

Abstract

The residents of Wadi al-Shati, like other residents in Fezzan province, rely mainly on the use of a private car to travel between various social and economic activities within and between cities, as it is the available means in the absence of public and collective transportation. Because of this, they find it difficult to reconcile their job obligations with driving their children to school and taking them home. In order to reduce the burden, parents resort to drivers who operate their own cars and/or minibuses as taxis, and agree with them to transport their children by collective transportation between home and school in exchange for a monthly wage determined by mutual consent. This study aims primarily to find out the extent to which secondary and intermediate education students in the study area and their parents want to use the public and collective transportation system whenever available in the region, as well as their preferred transportation fares, and the types of public transportation desirable to use. In this study, the survey method was relied on for a sample of students and parents in the targeted schools in the study area, by making a set of questionnaires with a number of questions, including (gender, age, monthly income, movements of individuals, costs of trips conducted by individuals, time of trips, and the extent to which it is possible to establish a public transport line and the appropriate means of transportation for them, as well as the appropriate pricing), and through the results that emerged from the data analysis, it was possible to develop a mathematical model to represent the data with a correlation coefficient (R =79.6). The study recommends using the proposed model as a decision-making aid when planning the public and collective transport system in the region, and recommends that the scope of the study be extended to all parts of the Beach Valley region and higher education institutions located in the region.