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

Public transport ridership retention is a challenge for many cities. To develop comprehensive strategies aimed at retaining riders, it is necessary to understand the aspects of public transport that influence users to become loyal to the system. This paper analyses relevant literature regarding the causes of satisfaction and loyalty in public transport. We find that the service factors most associated with satisfaction are on-board cleanliness and comfort, courteous and helpful behaviour from operators, safety, as well as punctuality and frequency of service. On the other hand, loyalty is associated with users’ perceptions of value-for-money, on-board safety and cleanliness, interactions with personnel and the image and commitment to public transport that users feels. Furthermore, the results elucidate that the concept of loyalty is best defined based on users’ intentions to continue using the service, their willingness to recommend it to others, their overall satisfaction, but also and most importantly, their image of and involvement with public transport. Public transport users who have a positive image of the agency and consider public transport an integral component of city life are more likely to demonstrate loyalty and act like ambassadors for public transport agencies.     

Optimal transport strategies for European cities

A new procedure for generating optimal transport strategies has been applied in nine European cities. A public sector objective function which reflects concerns over efficiency, environmental impact, finance and sustainability is specified and a set of policy measures with acceptable ranges on each, identified. Optimal strategies based on combinations of these policy measures which generate the optimal value of the objective function, are identified, and compared between cities. Resulting policy recommendations are presented. The results demonstrate the importance of an integrated approach to transport strategy formulation. They emphasise the role of changes in public transport service levels and of fares, and of charges for car use. By contrast, new infrastructure projects are less frequently justified. In the majority of cities the revenues from car use charges are sufficient to finance other elements in the strategy. However, private sector involvement either in initial financing or in operation may be desirable. Revised objective functions to reflect private sector involvement are specified, and optimal strategies with private sector operation of public transport are also identified. The requirement to meet private sector rates of return for public transport operation typically results in lower frequencies and higher fares; charges for car use then need to be raised to satisfy public policy objectives, but system performance is reduced. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Changing roles and new perspectives: towards market orientation in public transport

The general international trend of increasingly subjecting the public transport industry to market principles has been concretized via various developments in many countries. In line with this trend, there is an increased interest in public procurement processes as a model for public service delivery. Sweden is one of the leading countries where public procurement is the prevailing model for delivering public services. In accordance with the general trend, efforts have been made to make Sweden’s public transport more sensitive to passenger needs, and to stimulate a competitive public transport system. For instance, a new Act, which came into effect on 1 January 2012, is aimed at fostering a customer-centric public transport system, with increased role clarity for the public transport actors. Since market-oriented strategies and public procurement processes are both receiving increased interest from the public transport industry, the market orientation of both public authorities and service providers in Sweden’s public transport has been studied. Since market orientation is a process of change, a longitudinal approach was whereby the first study was conducted in the spring of 2011 and the second in the spring of 2014. All of Sweden’s public transport authorities and the service providers that they stated as their major contract holders were asked to participate. In total, 184 respondents participated in the studies. The findings show that the industry as a whole has increased its organizational and inter-organizational efforts to both acquire knowledge of and respond to passenger needs. In particular, the public service providers have increased their involvement in market-oriented activities.     

Estimating the demand for urban bus travel

The disadvantages of conventional transportation study models, in particular their large data requirements and their weaknesses in dealing with changes in trip generation rates have led to a need for a simple model that can quickly and at low cost examine alternative public transport strategies.This paper investigates simple economic models of bus demand, examines alternative variables that can be used and discusses some alternative model forms. It demonstrates the results of a model using data from twelve urban bus operators in Britain and compares the results with those from other types of study. The model utilises fare and service quality elasticities to explain the decline in passengers on urban bus services, and derives an average elasticity with respect to fare changes of –0.31 and with respect to service quality changes of +0.62. It is estimated that fare rises accounted for 13% of the 43% decline in passengers over the last fifteen years, vehicle mileage reductions for 14.3% and that only 15.7% was due to such factors as rising car ownership which are often given as the cause of declining bus patronage.The results, by showing that passengers are far more sensitive to changes in service than they are to fare rises, are a useful guide to the broader public transport policy issues, and the paper concludes that the model does provide a useful method of forecasting public transport demand at a strategic level. Further work is needed, however, to establish more accurate forecasts for different types of passenger and studies are now being undertaken to establish these and to construct an operational forecasting model that can be applied with only limited data requirements     

Perceived accessibility,mobility, and connectivity of public transportation systems

Although public transportation is considered effective at reducing the external cost of driving private vehicles, many urbanites do not use public transportation. This study develops measures employing accessibility, mobility, and seamless connectivity for an entire public transportation service chain as indicators for evaluating public transport services, prioritizes underperforming scenarios from the perspective of urban travelers, and derives various market segmentation strategies that consider different socio-demographic characteristics. A conceptual model is set up herein to assess these latent constructs that describe unobservable and immeasurable characteristics. As a Likert ordinal scale can generate misleading statistical inferences, the Rasch model is used to eliminate bias generated by an ordinal scale when measuring these three latent constructs separately. The Rasch model compares person parameters with item parameters, which are then subjected to logarithmic transformation along a logit scale so as to recognize specific difficulties of service scenarios that cannot be easily eliminated by certain urban travelers. The multidimensional Rasch model also measures the perceptions of urban travelers in terms of the interactions between accessibility, mobility, and seamless connectivity of this public transportation system. While comparing urban travelers of two large cities in Taiwan, Taipei and Kaohsiung, the empirical results demonstrate that perceived accessibility, mobility, and seamless connectivity differ based on travelers’ age, frequency of weekly sports activities, and environmental awareness. This paper also advances appropriate improvement strategies and provides policy suggestions for urban planners, public transportation service operation agencies, and policy makers when they seek to create user-friendly public transportation services. The proposed approach can be generalized in other cities by considering their local context uniqueness and further evaluating their public transport services.     

Public transport demand: dynamic panel model analysis

This paper presents an original essay that explains the mobility behaviour towards the public transport supply in Tunisia. This research aims to determine the key variables affecting an individual’s decision to travel by public transport and explains how the use of these means fits the mobility strategies. The dynamic panel model is applied to twelve Tunisian Regional companies, where we aim to analyze the behaviours of Tunisian citizens in the regions where Regional Transport Companies ensure the total service supply of urban, interurban and suburban public transport of travellers. The results show that mobility behaviours are subject to various variables. In particular, service quality, mean price and active population are the most significant variables regarding public transport demand in Tunisia.     

Modelling and simulation of transportation system effectiveness to reduce traffic congestion: a system dynamics framework

ABSTRACT

This paper is designed to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of transportation systems and reduce traffic congestion through the use of simulation models and scenario development. A system dynamics framework is used to test and evaluate the alternatives of future strategies for the city of Surabaya, Indonesia. Some factors affecting the effectiveness of transport systems include operational effectiveness and service effectiveness, as well as uncertainty. To improve the effectiveness of transportation systems, several strategies can be implemented, such as subsidizing public transportation, increasing the cost of private vehicle parking fees, raising taxes on private vehicles, and reducing delays in public transportation through scenario development. Scenario results show that, by pursuing these strategies, effectiveness could be improved by 80% as the impact of the increase in operational and service effectiveness, helping to mitigate traffic congestion. Congestion could be reduced to 70% (on average) due to the decrease in daily traffic.     

Car ownership and public transport use: Revisiting the interaction

At the beginning of the 1980s, it seemed that a consensus was emerging among researchers that public transport service levels, fares or quality had a small but possibly important effect on car ownership, and that this should be taken into account for those purposes where car ownership forecasts are used for developing policy on public transport or roads. Somehow, the findings faded away, and had little effect on policy thinking or on analytical techniques. The results of six surveys carried out in South Yorkshire over the period 1972 to 1991, during which there were extreme changes in public transport policy, tend to support a prima facie case for reopening the question. At the household level, car ownership rates are shown to be more volatile than is often assumed, especially in multiple car households. This volatility provides a context within which the quality of public transport provision appears to influence both the level of car ownership and the relationship between changes in the level of car ownership and changes in public transport use.     

The demand for public transport. part II. supply and demand factors of public transport

Abstract

This two‐part article, concerned with the way public transport ridership is affected by the various relevant factors, is based on the Executive Summary of The Demand for Public Transport (Webster and Bly 1980), the report of the TRRL‐sponsored International Collaborative Study on Factors Affecting Public Transport Patronage. Part I of the article, which was concerned with the social and economic conditions in which public transport operates, showed the importance of the background factors such as income, car ownership and land use on public transport usage: it also indicated how the longer‐term impacts of the more direct demand factors (fares, service levels) often show themselves in changes in car ownership levels, activity patterns (i.e. where people live, work, shop, socialize, etc) and land‐use development.

Part II reviews the current state of knowledge on the effects of changes in fare levels and quality of service and of the introduction of various traffic and transport measures (traffic restraint, bus priority, etc): it outlines current methodology on costing public transport services and draws the supply and demand sides together in a consideration of particular strategies which are at the disposal of the operator, the planner and the policy maker.     

The limits of analyzing service quality data in public transport

In recent years, management and academics have increasingly focused on quality management in public transport. In particular, many public transport operators regularly monitor their service quality over time and use these data to assess quality performance (e.g., for performance-based quality contracts) and to determine managerial decisions (e.g., budget allocations for service improvements). However, despite the widespread applications of service quality data in practice, it is unclear whether cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data provide valid insights for quality management purposes. In this study, we investigate the usability of cross-sectional analyses and cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data by conducting an empirical study that tracked a panel’s perceptions of the service quality of public transport and its choice over the course of three consecutive years. The results demonstrate that cross-sectional analyses provide valid insights for quality management. However, cross-temporal comparisons should be interpreted carefully because the results of these comparisons are surprisingly unreliable. In fact, we find that service quality data do not provide reliable results over time and therefore conclude that cross-temporal comparisons of service quality data must be interpreted with caution for quality management in public transport.     

Do the organizational forms affect passenger satisfaction? Evidence from Chinese public transport service

This paper presents a discussion on the relationship between organizational forms (including the ownership structure and the contractual practices) and passenger satisfaction of Chinese public transport service. To test this proposition, an original rich data set covering 4702 respondents and 58 public transport operators of 13 cities for the period 2013–2014 is used. We firstly estimate the passenger satisfaction based on customer satisfaction theory and PLS-SEM, and then take into consideration the mixed logit model to assess the effect between them. Conclusions drawn from the study are summarized as follows: ① The effect of organizational forms on the passenger satisfaction of public transport service is confirmed. ② Public transport services franchised to public ownership offer higher passenger satisfaction than those franchised to private ownership and mixed ownership. ③ Public transport services regulated by the management contracts incite more passenger satisfaction than those regulated by net cost contracts and gross cost contracts.     

Optimal scheduling of public transport fleet at network level

This paper deals with the development of a strategic approach for optimizing the operation of public transport system that considers both user's objective and operator's objective. Passengers of public transport are assumed to seek a minimum wait time to conduct the trips, while on the other hand, operators are concerned with the efficient operation such as minimum fleet size. The average minimum wait time is to be achieved by creating an optimal despatching policy for each vehicle from the terminal. As for efficient operation the utilisation of vehicle should be maximised by having a minimum number of vehicles in operation. User's and operator's objectives are optimized within certain operational constraints such as vehicle capacity to maintain acceptable level of service. The i‐model is contructed in a bi‐level programming form in which the user's objective is minimized by dynamic programming and the operator's objective is minimized by various routing strategies. Furthermore, an algorithm and a contrived example are developed to solve and see the performance of the approach.     

Transport reviews prize

This paper reviews the provision of public transport in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area and the proposals for its future development. A vitally distinguishing characteristic of public transport in Cape Town and other South African cities is the fractured market with great discrepancies between different segments. These range from those with high incomes and preferences similar to those found in typically First World countries to a great majority living at or below minimum poverty levels with virtually no choices and a very different set of needs and preferences. Although scope for improving service levels and satisfying user needs is unlimited, in South Africa resources for transport are facing severe competition from other macrolevel social and economic imperatives, such as combating crime and addressing discrepancies in health and education needs. This situation represents a huge challenge to those responsible for planning and developing public transport strategies. Evidence is presented that current public transport services are unsustainable in terms of increasing subsidy requirements while also not effectively meeting user needs. Proposals to restructure the public transport system and to use Stated Preference techniques to identify user needs are put forward. Given the fractured market for public transport in metropolitan Cape Town, Stated Preference techniques will require innovative adaptations and different approaches to those most commonly applied elsewhere in the world and this paper provides some broad guidelines.     

Reforming the urban public transport bus system in Malta: Approach and acceptance

The islands of Malta have joined the European Union in 2004 and have for the past decade suffered a decline in the patronage of its public transport service. Offered under a monopoly by an Association of individual owner drivers, the public transport service has not changed dramatically since its start in the early 1900s. Instead, an organic growth alongside the main routes linking new areas to the public transport network and a declining level of service pushed even more the local population to switch to private mobility. This has classified the islands amongst the countries in the world with the highest levels of motorisation. In 2008, following a general election and a general strike held by the public transport operators over the Government’s intentions to remove monopolies, the new Minister for Transport published his intentions to reform public transport from its roots. This reform included the removal of the monopolies protecting the incumbents as well as developing a new network of services which cater more effectively to the public’s travelling demands. This paper deals with the public transport reform and through direct observation details the processes involved in the regulation of public transport as well as the design of the new public transport network. The paper concludes with the critical factors which led to implementation of the reform and how this is applicable to cities worldwide.     

公交服务质量评价研究

本文对评价公交服务质量的一些指标进行简单的探讨,选取了最有代表性的安全性、方便性、经济型、迅速性、准时性、舒适性6个方面12项指标进行研究。由于很难得到部分指标的确切数据,因此无法使用这些部分指标。本文中,采用经验概率作为其可靠性指标,简单直观的反映公交的服务能力。最后,简单介绍效能模型ADC并运用系统效能模型对西安二环2号线公交服务进行评价并给出相应的建议。     

A model of the vicious cycle of a bus line

It has been frequently noted that in a non-regulated environment the development of public transport service is self-adjusting: Faced with decreasing demand, operators will tend to reduce service to cut costs, resulting in a decrease in the level-of-service, which then triggers a further drop in demand. The opposite may also occur: high demand will induce the operator to increase supply, e.g. through an increase in frequency, which results in a higher level-of-service and a subsequent increase in passenger numbers, triggering another round of service improvements. This paper adds to the literature by presenting an analytic model for analyzing these phenomena that we call vicious and virtuous cycles. Based on field data regarding passengers’ variation in willingness-to-wait for a public transport service, we investigate the dynamics of the line service and show how the emergence of a vicious or virtuous cycle depends on the total number of potential passengers, the share of captive riders, and bus capacity. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the planning of public transport services.     

Measuring the influence of bus service quality on the perception of users

Encouraging the use of public transport is a key policy goal in many countries. Therefore, public transport should offer the level of quality that accommodates the demands of current users, and importantly, the desires of potential users. This study investigates the influence of the perceived quality of bus service on the perception of both current and potential users. The study draws upon data from 512 questionnaires distributed across Belfast City in the UK. The study utilises a binary logistic regression model to quantify the relationships between the perceived quality of 29 bus indicators (independent) and the perceptions of users towards the overall bus service (dependent). Eleven significant indicators are reported to have significant influence on the perception of users. These indicators are utilised to propose scenarios for optimising the quality of bus service with the perceptions of current and potential users.     

Singapore: The Development of a World Class Transport System

Singapore's Land Transport Authority, formed in 1995, set itself a mission of producing a world class transport system. This paper assesses the extent to which this goal is being achieved. It outlines the structure within which transport decisions are taken and indicates the freedom this gives to develop integrated transport and land‐use strategies. It demonstrates the long‐term stability in transport strategy from 1972 onwards, and the key contributions to that strategy of land‐use controls and travel‐demand management measures. The individual elements of the strategy are then reviewed and innovations identified in demand management, public transport service provision and information technology. Finally, the key attributes that have led to the success of the strategy are identified, and it is suggested that many of these are transferable to other cities of the developed world.     

Optimal vehicle size for road‐based urban public transport in developing countries

Road‐based public transport in the cities of developing countries comes in a variety of physical and organizational forms. Many of these cities have a large component of unconventional or intermediate public transport (IPT). IPT often fills the gaps in service that cannot be provided by the operators of conventional public transport. The contrast in institutional framework between the operators of conventional vehicles and IPT is sharpened by the profitability of the two types; conventional buses, usually organized in large fleets and often run by the government, are seemingly difficult to maintain as a commercial enterprise whereas IPT which is usually privately owned in small fleets is profitable. A considerable debate has arisen over which type of public transport system (conventional or IPT) to encourage. The debate has often been confused because it involves two quite separate issues: whether the provision of public transport should be left entirely to private enterprise, and, the technical and economic benefits of different bus sizes. Size of vehicle is a particularly important issue in the developing world because vehicles of different size are in common use and are frequently in competition with one another. The purpose of this paper is to review and critically assess current research work on urban public transport with particular reference to vehicle size in the context of Third World conditions.     

Drivers of transit service loyalty considering heterogeneity between user segments

Users’ loyalty to public transit service is fundamental to promote its popularity in the transportation market. A four-step analytical framework is advanced to investigate the importance of service attributes that heterogeneous transit user segments place on their public transit service loyalty, measured in terms of overall satisfaction and re-use intention. Critical service attributes perceived by transit users that are relevant for loyalty enhancement are explicitly determined, which vary between user segments. It is suggested that the design of strategies aimed to promote the use of public transit by increasing user loyalty towards transit service be targeted at specific attributes that contribute most to loyalty and specific user segments whose original loyalty level is significantly different to others.