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rding to Jayaraman et al. (2010), only if public transportation is efficient, affordable, clean, comfortable and convenient, people would otherwise resort to drive to their destinations. In his studies, he argues that public bus transport authorities in Malaysia facing tremendous challenges to deal with the poor utilization rate and the resistance of the public to utilize public bus transportation in order to solve the problems associated with the excessive usage of private transportation.

Another research conducted in Putrajaya, however argued that although service quality positively influencing the ridership, improvement in service alone may not be enough to sufficiently encourage the modal shift (Nor et al., 2006). According to Steg (2003), in the densely populated Netherland where the public transport is widely available, the car use was evaluated much more positively than public transport except for traffic safety. It appeared that five dimensions underlie the attractiveness judgements of car use: independence and convenience, the ‘fun’ of car use, control and freedom, kick and status and negative aspects of car use (i.e., travel costs, traffic unsafety and stress).

The car users do not only travel by car because they need to do so, but also because they love driving and due to its psychological and cultural meanings where the Motorists can express themselves in the choice of their car and the way they use it and driving a car may cause feelings of control or feelings of superiority over others as well as the feel of pleasurable, adventurous, and arousing (Steg, 2003)

A matter that has to be reiterated is that public transportation servicesmust be enhanced prior to reducing the demand for private cars via various traffic restraint programs to avoid a political and public backlash (Kasipillai & Chan, 2008).Unless public transportation is efficient, affordable, clean, comfortable and convenient, people would otherwise resort to drive to their destinations (Jayaraman et al., 2011).

1.3 Bus, the Primary Mode of Public Transportation

Public transportation includes various modes such as buses, subways, rails, trolleys, and ferry boats and excludes school buses and charter and sightseeing services (Tran & Kleiner, 2005). In the low and middle income countries, buses act as the primary mode of mass transit since the past until present will continued to be so in foreseeable future (Tiwari, 1994). Buses considered as the safest and efficient modes of transport due to its larger size and mass than most other road vehicles (Ibid). According to Levinson (2000), bus transport will continue to provide importance service to Metropolitan America. In his study, he identified several problems of the bus system such as the quality of service provided, passenger acceptance and ridership are varied. Many services are well liked and patronized. However, too often, service is perceived as slow and unreliable; the image is poor; and concerns are expressed over safety and security (Ibid). Some studies showed that an efficient public transportation system with reduced bus travel time and cost is essential to encourage especially motorists or car drivers to utilize the public bus transportation services (Nurdden et al., 2007; Sheikh et al., 2006).

An efficient transportation system is one of the basic components of the social, economic, an