Public perception of public transportation: Understanding dimensions through analysis of news articles

Abstract

Public transportation is a vital part of the national infrastructure, offering essential mobility and supporting environmental sustainability. However, public perception greatly influences the adoption and effectiveness of public transportation. Past studies on this topic have used surveys, gamification, and social media to gauge public perception. Surveys are often costly and capture only short-term opinions, while gamification can increase engagement but remains limited in reach, and social media provides real-time data but faces reliability and representativeness issues. In contrast, with recent advances in text mining, news coverage offers verified, longitudinal, and cost-effective insights into public perception.

This research takes a different approach by analyzing 80,000 news articles between 1980 and 2023 across the United States. It employs text mining techniques such as topic modeling and sentiment analysis. The identified topics were grouped into seven main clusters, and for each, the popularity and sentiment were analyzed. The study found that, based on news analysis, transportation planning, a cluster related to governmental and policy issues, accounts for 41% of coverage and has been the leading concern since 2005. Public safety was the dominant concern between 1980 and 2004, while public health became prominent after 2019 following the pandemic. This suggests that public perception is shaped more by policy-related issues than by service-related ones, which most current research focuses on. The study offers new insights into the dimensions of public transportation as reflected in news coverage, as well as a framework to help policymakers and decision-makers understand public opinion about public transportation, thereby enhancing public engagement in transportation management.