Passenger Satisfaction across Multiple Public Transit Modes

Understanding how the passenger satisfaction varies across multiple Public Transit (PT) modes is helpful to identify different needs of service users and make improvements accordingly. This study investigates customer satisfaction in three PT modes (bus rapid transit, metro, and jitney) using a set of consistent customer satisfaction surveys; providing a comparable approach in the surveying tool, defined variables, and model structure across different modes. Additionally, the effects of a wide set of variables influencing satisfaction such as personal and trip characteristics, and perceptions towards service quality attributes have been incorporated in the modeling process. A total of 1,808 valid responses from PT passengers in Tehran have been used to develop ordered logit models. The findings indicate that bus rapid transit and metro users are respectively more satisfied with their trips compared to jitney users, and the reasons have been explored. Also, an importance-performance analysis has been applied on the modeling results as an application of the study to prioritize improvements in the service quality attributes of all three PT modes aiming towards allocating limited resources more efficiently. The transit agencies can benefit from this study to find specific strategies for each PT mode and increase competitiveness within the transit system.