School Commuting: Barriers, Abilities and Strategies toward Sustainable Public Transport Systems in Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a nice paper that is well written and adds to the literature and has excellent implications for policy. A few minor points I would likethe authors to respond to namely

i) You need to clarify what you mean by an item-person map. I am not familiar with this and there was not explanation beyond its mention in the introduction?

ii) Estimating missing values, as highlighted in your current modelling approach, does not equate to an accurate model. In fact, depending on how the estimation is undertaken it can in fact introduce bias especially in a binary Rasch Model.

iii) There is no need to provide detail in the methods on dichotomous and polytomous data; these are self explanatary and readers will be clear about this

iv) The authors need to provide much detail on the sample namely, how it was selected, the sample size the response fraction, where it was drawn from was it random of purposive etc. This is missing from the paper and knowing this adds to the validity of the findings (and the generalisability)

Author Response

Dear Reviewer.

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have revised our manuscript according to reviewer suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Thank you very much

Best regards,

Muhammad Zudhy Irawan

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This article has potential to engage with a very salient area of transport policy, but in its current form it is appears rather abstract - more concerned with testing a mathematical model than getting to grips with policy within its place context. I reflect this in my following comments:

1. Spatial context: in its current form, the article has very little geographical specificity to it. Large sections could be about any city of any scale anywhere in the world. It needs contextualisation. You should introduce readers to the geographical context of Yogyakarta and to any local (transport provision, culture etc.) or global factors (e.g. urban scale, structure) that may affect travel choices.
2. Literature: related to the above, you should discuss the findings from other comparable studies in Indonesia (there is quite a large literature from Jakarta) and come back to these comparisons towards the end of the paper.
3. Methodology: you need to include more details about how the survey was conducted, overall sample sizes, response rate and so forth.
4. Tables: lengthy data tables are not interesting for many readers. Try to edit down, but if really necessary to include then think about putting them in an appendix.
5. Conclusions: your conclusions left me wondering about the role of educating students on the impact of their travel choices / wider sustainability, given the imperative of sustainable travel generally and getting young people into good habits early. Note that some of the specific issues / barriers identified could be addressed by simply having more students travelling by bus generally (e.g. subjective feelings of safety).

Author Response

Dear Reviewer.

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have revised our manuscript according to reviewer suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Thank you very much

Best regards,

Muhammad Zudhy Irawan

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors examined the barriers in using the public transport system for school commuting based on a case study of Yogyakarta. The work is timely and interesting – the research methodologies are reasonable, and the findings are justifiable. However, there are still a few aspects that should be improved. I focus here only on a few major points, which are hopefully easy for the authors to take into account in the revision.

 

• The authors should identify the research question(s) more clearly in the Introduction. The current introduction is too short without adequate background information.

 

• The literature review should be strengthened in a more critical way. There are many previous works on travel behaviour and mode choices which have not been reviewed (suggest reading, for instance, doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.12.007, doi.org/10.1177/2399808320924433 and doi.org/10.3141/1895-08). The authors should summarize what is widely acknowledged and what remains to be explored.

 

• The representativeness of the case study areas should be further explained. How can the lessons learnt from Yogyakarta be extended to other areas? The authors need to justify the case representativeness to attract a wider audience without local knowledge.

 

• The theoretical contribution is not clearly summarised in the introduction and conclusions sections. How do the findings specifically contribute to the existing literature, particularly in the research domains of sustainability?

 

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer.

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have revised our manuscript according to reviewer suggestions. Please see the attachment.

Thank you very much

Best regards,

Muhammad Zudhy Irawan

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I enjoyed reading this extensively revised version of this paper, and congratulate the authors for turning this around this so quickly. I was surprised to see a new author added at this stage, but I assume that they have had significant input into the revisions / and the work overall. 

I believe the paper is virtually ready now. Just a couple of minor points:

1. In your introduction, please add a few sentences to contextualise the overall research topic - i.e. about the overall salience of students' travel to education. It's important for the reader to be able to appreciate the wider domain in which this work sits.
2. Numerical figures should either be expressed in word form ('nine hundred and forty five thousand') or, better, in numerical form ('945,000') but not a mix of both ('945 thousand') as is currently  the case.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable comments in improving the quality of our manuscript. Please check my response below. I also attach our response into the attachment file.

Point 1. In your introduction, please add a few sentences to contextualise the overall research topic - i.e. about the overall salience of students’ travel to education. It’s important for the reader to be able to appreciate the wider domain in which this work sits.

Response 1. Thank you for your suggestion. We have added a sentence to contextualise the overall research topic in line 46-49, as follows: “Examining the students’ travel is crucial to support sustainable urban transport. Once we understand their barriers in using public transport, we could propose some policies to encourage them to use public transport and, therefore, getting them into good habits early and stimulate them to keep using public transport in the future.”

Point 2. Numerical figures should either be expressed in word form (‘nine hundred and forty five thousand’) or, better, in numerical form (‘945,000’) but not a mix of both ('945 thousand’) as is currently  the case.

Response 2. Thank you very much for your input. We have changed numerical figures as the reviewer suggested. In addition, we also updated the official data from 2019 to 2020 in Section 3. Please check in line 152-153, 154, 159-161, and Table 3.

Best regards,

Muhammad Zudhy Irawan

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript has been greatly improved.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

Thank you very much for your appreciation. 

Best regards,

Muhammad Zudhy Irawan