Rail-based Public Transport Service Quality and User Satisfaction – A Literature Review

While rail-based public transport is clearly a more advanced and preferable alternative to driving and a way of overcoming traffic congestion and pollution problems, the rate of uptake for rail travel has remained stagnant as a result of various well-known issues such as that commuters either use a more reliable and comfortable alternative to get from A to B and/or that they are not satisfied with the quality of service provided. This study examined the factor of user satisfaction regarding rail-based public transport with the aim of discovering precisely what factors have a significant effect on the user satisfaction and uptake of rail travel. This was approached using both the Delphi approach and a thorough review of the current literature, focusing on a total of nine possible factors affecting passenger satisfaction with rail travel availability of service, accessibility of service, ticket or pass, punctuality, clarity of information, quality of customer service, comfort, safety, and image. Also discussed were 29 extra possible attributes and several measures that were implemented in various countries to increase the service quality. It was concluded that this review will provide valuable information for policymakers, researchers and service providers in terms of specifying the service factors most worth investigating if the quality of this crucial means of transport is to be raised.</p

Tariffing in Integrated Passenger Transport Systems: A Literature Review

Designing tariff systems in public passenger transport is a complex issue of optimization by means of satisfying the wants and needs of all the engaged parties. An integrated passenger transport system (IPTS) stands for the concept of organization and management of public passenger transport based on a uniform tariff system. The issue of transport disadvantage of certain peri-urban and rural areas is the result of poorly organized transport systems. Social and spatial isolation in the framework of mobility is partly the fault of the way in which tariff systems have been designed with no regard to the social factors of the engaged parties for which such systems are designed – its users. Special emphasis in the research of tariff systems is placed on resolving issues of designing tariff zones, maximizing social welfare, transport equity, and transport disadvantage. An outline of the existing research and a review of literature concerning tariffs in integrated passenger transport systems is given, and proposals are put forward for future research due to the need for designing socially beneficial tariff systems, which would eliminate social exclusion, i.e., the transport disadvantage of individuals or parts of society

New pricing theory of intelligent flexible transportation

In the paper, possible pricing structures of flexible transport systems have been investigated. After a brief introduction into demand responsive systems, the currently used pricing systems have been analysed. Having reviewed the conventional pricing methodologies – in line with the average cost and marginal cost based methods – the advantages and the disadvantages of particular systems are presented. What is more, that traditional pricing theory enabled to order costs of flexible transportation systems only approximately to passengers in proportion to their demanded transportation performance, thus traditional pricing framework is not able to fully meet the principle of fairness. For reaching the highest level of fairness loops a fictive unit of individual trips is introduced as the base of pricing. When applying individual loops is gives a unique approach to describe unit cost of the operators especially considering that empty runs are taken into account in a fair way. Beside fairness, it is also an essential objective to represent economies of scale and the preference of early bookings in the pricing methodology. Accordingly, the below presented ‘mixed price system’ had good results in the reduction of average fares related to new travellers and also in the improvement of attraction related to ‘early birds’. Therefore, the goal of this research was to define the direction and the aspects of the development process related to the pricing methods of flexible transportation. First published online 13 July 201

Optimizing fares and transfer discounts for a bus-subway corridor

This paper aims to optimize fares and transfer discounts for public transit service along a bus-subway corridor with the consideration of effects of uncertainty in travel times and difference in stop spacing between bus and subway services on passenger behavior. The former factor is captured by the reserved time in travel cost and the latter one produces some passenger Origin–Destination (O–D) pairs along the corridor that can not be served by one mode only. This problem is formulated as a bi-level program, of which the upper level maximizes the social welfare and the lower-level capturing traveler choice behavior is a variable-demand Stochastic User Equilibrium (SUE) assignment model. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) is applied to solve the bi-level program while the Method of Successive Averages (MSA) is adopted to solve the lower-level model. A series of numerical experiments are carried out to illustrate the performance of the model and solution method. Numerical results indicate that the implementation of transfer discounts may be of great benefit to the social welfare and that the uncertainty in travel time and the difference in stop spacing play an important role in determining optimal fares and transfer discounts for the service along a bus-subway corridor

Models and Solution Algorithms for Asymmetric Traffic and Transit Assignment Problems

Modeling the transportation system is important because it provides a “common ground” for discussing policy and examining the future transportation plan required in practices. Generally, modeling is a simplified representation of the real world; however, this research added value to the modeling practice by investigating the asymmetric interactions observed in the real world in order to explore potential improvements of the transportation modeling. The Asymmetric Transportation Equilibrium Problem (ATEP) is designed to precisely model actual transportation systems by considering asymmetric interactions of flows. The enhanced representation of the transportation system by the ATEP is promising because there are various asymmetric interactions in real transportation such as intersections, highway ramps, and toll roads and in the structure of the transit fares. This dissertation characterizes the ATEP with an appropriate solution algorithm and its applications. First, the research investigates the factors affecting the convergence of the ATEP. The double projection method is applied to various asymmetric types and complexities in the different sizes of networks in order to identify the influential factors including demand intensities, network configuration, route composition between modes, and sensitivity of the cost function. Secondly, the research develops an enhancement strategy for improvement in computational speed for the double projection method. The structural characteristics of the ATEP are used to develop the convergence enhancement strategy that significantly reduces the computational burdens. For the application side, instances of asymmetric interactions observed in in-vehicle crowding and the transit fare structure are modeled to provide a suggestion on policy approach for a transit agency. The direct application of the crowding model into the real network indicates that crowd modeling with multi user classes could influence the public transportation system planning and the revenue achievement of transit agencies. Moreover, addition of the disutility factor, crowding, not always causes the increase of disutility from the transit uses. The application of the non-additive fare structure in the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) network addresses the potential of the distance-based fare structure should the UTA make a transition to this fare structure from their current fare model. The analysis finds that the zero base fare has the highest potential for increasing the transit demand. However, collecting less than $0.50 with a certain buffer distance for the first boarding has potential for attracting the users to UTA\u27s transit market upon the fare structure change

How the Poor Afford Public Transportation: the Case of New York City

This research asks how universality of ridership is maintained in New York City’s transit system given that it is gated by the fare. Transportation planning scholarship presumes transit is affordable because the fare has a relatively low price and ridership among the poor is high. The transit agency addresses universality by maintaining a fare structure that keeps the single ride fare relatively low. Its method is based on empirical evidence that low-income riders “prefer” cheaper fare products over those with lower average fares but that require higher initial cash outlays. Transportation scholarship observes that low-income riders are inelastic and presumes, based on economic theory, that riders will forego more elastic goods to ride transit. Critical planning scholars have contested the tenets of the modernist planning project which utilize predict-and-provide empiricism and neoclassical economic models such as these. While urban planning has turned toward direct collaboration or at least participation with affected communities, transportation planning has not fully made this turn. There is thus little transit-related research that is informed directly by riders, especially low-income riders, suggesting the conventional approaches to understanding how riders afford the fare are incomplete. To fill this void, this research engages with low-income transit riders to elaborate and challenge the explanations for universality of ridership. It finds that although the fare price is low, it is not necessarily affordable. The “preference” for single ride fares is in most cases the result of constraints. Single fare rides are often combined with fare evasion and exploitation of free transfers, while unlimited fare cards are highly sought and widely shared. Low-income riders are more likely to undertake compensating behaviors than to forego goods. On the occasions when they do forego goods, they compromise necessities such as food, telephone service, rent and laundry. Finally, agents of the welfare state distribute fares to low-income individuals to promote rehabilitation and labor force attachment. Together these findings suggest that universality of ridership is tenuous. It depends on fragmented systems of generosity, compromise and welfare of which transit advocates and planners are largely unaware. Fare evasion enforcement, pricing structures and fare payment methods can pose challenges to riders who rely on these fragmented systems. By explicitly acknowledging transit affordability, and incorporating knowledge on the role that welfare plays in enabling low-income ridership, planners can expand access to transit for low-income riders