Methodology to determine service delivery levels for public transportation

When designing transit services, the Level-of-Service concept has been widely used by transport planners and service providers to assess the service quality of an existing transit system. In addition to the service quality assessment, service providers also need to estimate the service levels that will satisfy a maximum number of users and potential users, across all socio-economic groups, so as to maximize patronage. This paper demonstrates a method using the concept of ‘user satisfaction levels’ and their ‘zone of tolerance’, along with total utility and marginal utility for service providers, to provide a range of service delivery levels for individual transit service attributes in the city of Kolkata. This range of service levels provides a guideline for service providers within which they can consider making an improvement in service level. However, the final decision on service improvement is an outcome of both financial and infrastructural feasibility.     

Importance of user perception in evaluating level of service for bus transit for a developing country like India: a review

Assessment of service quality in bus transit planning has received due attention in recent years from the viewpoint of optimal service allocation. The concept of level of service (LOS) has emerged as an effective tool to measure quality of services. Service-quality assessment provides operators with knowledge on users' satisfaction with existing services and their expected LOSs. The importance of user perception towards assessment of LOS has been acknowledged by researchers. While LOS standards for public transportation have been established by the Transportation Research Board in the USA, researchers have questioned the applicability of these standards in the context of different geographic regions. Since the service delivery environment differs between developed and developing nations, the user perception of service quality varies between these economic regions. Substantial research has been carried out in the context of both developed and developing nations, to identify the bus transit service parameters that affect users' perceived service quality; however, little research exists that establishes LOS thresholds for bus transit, based on user perception. This paper reviews the concept of LOS, describes the importance of user perception in assessment of service quality and identifies the need to establish LOS thresholds for bus transit from user perception for developing countries.