What influences satisfaction and loyalty in public transport? A review of the literature

Ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction with public transport is a key objective for transit agencies wishing to maintain and/or increase service uptake. Importance – Performance Analysis (IPA) can be used to identify gaps in the performance of public transport service attributes relative to their importance. However, this approach is often used without adequate consideration of its validity or reliability. Using a case study of bus services in Tehran, Iran, this paper contributes to the literature by improving the validity and reliability of IPA through: incorporating Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to identify key components of bus service attributes, proposing a method for prioritising attributes, introducing confidence intervals around each attribute to aid in the interpretation of results, and dividing the sample using Cluster Analysis (CA) to mitigate the effects of heterogeneity on the results. The performance and importance of 15 different bus service attributes was assessed through a survey of 390 bus passengers conducted at six high-traffic bus terminals in Tehran. EFA results showed that the bus attributes could be represented by four key components: convenience, comfort, reliability and security. CA results classified the sample into three clusters based on socio-demographic and bus travel characteristics. IPA results indicated that transit agencies and policy-makers need to give greater attention to improving comfort related attributes of bus services in Tehran such as ventilation, cleanliness of buses, and providing facilities for elderly/disabled people. The enhanced approach to IPA developed in this paper can be applied to other jursidictions where agencies are seeking to identify areas to improve public transport customer satisfaction.

Importance – Performance Analysis (IPA) of bus service attributes: A case study in a developing country

Finding ways to improve the service quality and consequently attract more passengers is a major concern for public transit officials worldwide. Given the fact that there is a glaring deficiency of service quality models in the literature, especially for developing nations, the present study develops interrelationships among service quality factors of Metro Rail Transit System (MRTS) in Delhi, India. For this purpose, the study implemented an integrated Bayesian Networks (BN) and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach on perceptions of 2390 passengers of Delhi Metro. Firstly, the study extracted 41 service quality indicators into eight service quality factors using principal component analysis. Secondly, the extracted factors were learnt in BN to achieve the most robust network structure. Thirdly, the robust BN structure was tested and analysed in PLS-SEM to develop a service quality model. The integrated methodological approach has facilitated in identifying hidden interrelationships among service quality factors through a systematic manner. The developed model indicates ‘passenger ease’ as the most influential and ‘amenities’ as the least influential factors of overall service quality (OSQ). The OSQ index of 79.59 reveals the moderate satisfaction of passengers with Delhi Metro services. The study proposed several insights into the service quality improvements for Delhi Metro that must be focused and enriched for increasing Metro transit ridership. This knowledge of interrelationships among service quality factors can help transit officials in formulating effective strategies and investment plans accordingly to meet the passengers’ needs.

Interrelationships among service quality factors of Metro Rail Transit System: An integrated Bayesian networks and PLS-SEM approach

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2022.101336

Public utility vehicle service quality and customer satisfaction in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic

Modelling perceived quality for urban public transport systems using weighted variables and random parameters

This paper presents the research and analysis process showing that transport system customers have a specific perception of service quality, as an indicator of transport system. Determining satisfactory level of service quality implies knowledge of travel demand and travel behaviour. There are a lot of elements that define the transport system quality. The goal of this paper is to identify the public transport system's service quality elements that should be primarily acted on, in order to increase the level of service quality from transport system users’ (public transport users’ and non-users’) point of view, with minimal investment. The paper describes a specifically defined research methodology for determining service quality elements that should be primarily acted on, from the transport system users’ point of view. Methodology involves the use of Importance Performance Analysis (IPA) which is upgraded with the state preferences analysis. Presented methodology, which is used to determine user p...

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Customer perception of service quality in public transport

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.103669

Adapting Urban Transport Planning to the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Integrated Fermatean Fuzzy Model

This paper presents an overview of the applied research methodologies and developed travel demand models that take weather impact into account. The paper deals with trip generation and modal split as elements of travel demand that best describe changes in the travel behaviour in different weather conditions. The authors herein emphasize the importance of research in local conditions in all climate zones, especially in areas where climate and modal split characteristics are different from those in common research areas. This review is designed as a brief guide on how the impact of weather can be explored in order to encourage conducting research even in the countries where there is no systematic traffic and travel data collection. The stated adaptation technique followed by the panel household travel surveys may be particularly appropriate for those countries. It is concluded that small budgets should not be considered an obstacle, because it is possible to draw reliable conclusions based even on small samples. Moreover, modern research methods enable a cheaper survey process together with the possibility of obtaining higher quality of results. The increasing popularity of research in this field should contribute to the creation of more resilient transport systems all over the world. A special contribution of this paper is the review of research studies carried out in central, western and southern Europe and not mentioned in any review paper before.

/pdf/impact-of-weather-conditions-on-travel-demand-the-most-3vubm1v2wn.pdf

Impact of Weather Conditions on Travel Demand – The Most Common Research Methods and Applied Models

The analysis of the large infrastructure projects effects reveals frequent errors in the intensity of traffic flows or investment costs estimation, which can jeopardize the established feasibility of the project. This reflects the importance of ex-post analyzes because they provide valuable information on the fulfillment of project goals, ie they are useful for the purpose of efficiency monitoring and cost-benefit analysis (CBA) improvement. A feasibility study for the construction of the second carriageway of the E75 freeway, on the section from Novi Sad to Belgrade, was done in 2003, and the results of a detailed traffic and economic analysis showed the absolute economic feasibility of this project. ex-post analysis of key factors enabled the identification of realized effects and the identification of all deviations, both in time dynamics and in economic indicators of costs/benefits. The results of the first conducted ex-post analysis of infrastructure projects in Serbia showed that the Mean Percentage Error (MPE) in the traffic forecast is -16.42%, and that investment costs are exceeded by 9.3%. The obtained internal rate of return (IRR) is less than 33% to 50% depending on the observed variant, but even the most critical value of 7.03% showed that the project was economically feasible.

Ex-post feasibility study analysis as a tool for achieved effects of large infrastructure projects analysis

The efficiency of urban transportation system is un-der the influence of weather conditions. It is necessary to incorporate these impacts into transport system analysis, in order to prepare adequate mitigation measures. Trans-port models are often used in different types of transport system analysis and forecasting of its future characteris-tics. This paper focuses on implementation of the impact of rain in transport modelling, particularly into a traffic assignment process as a part of a macroscopic transport model. This aspect of modelling is important because it can indicate parts of the network where this impact leads to a high volume/capacity ratio, which is a good input for defining mitigation measures. Commonly, transport models do not consider weather impacts in its standard procedures. The paper presents a methodology for cali-brating volume-delay function in order to improve traf-fic assignment modelling in case of rain. The impact of different rain categories on capacity and free-flow speed was quantified and implemented in the volume-delay function. Special attention is given to the calibration of the part of volume-delay function for over-saturated traf-fic conditions. Calibration methodology is applicable for different types of volume-delay functions and presents a solid approach to incorporate weather conditions into common engineering practice.

Vladimir D. Đorić

Papers

Customer perception of service quality in public transport

Adapting Urban Transport Planning to the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Integrated Fermatean Fuzzy Model

Impact of Weather Conditions on Travel Demand – The Most Common Research Methods and Applied Models

Ex-post feasibility study analysis as a tool for achieved effects of large infrastructure projects analysis

Modelling the Impact of Rain in Traffic Assignment Procedures