Cluster Analysis for Diminishing Heterogeneous Opinions of Service Quality Public Transport Passengers

[EN] One of the principal measures that public transport administrations are following for reaching a sustainable transportation in the cities consists on attract a higher number of citizens towards the use of public transport modes, by offering high quality services. Collecting users opinions is the best way of detecting where the service is failing and which aspects are been provided successfully. The main problem that has to be faced for analyzing service quality is the subjective nature of its measurement, offering heterogeneous assessments among passengers about the service. Stratifying the sample of users on segments of passengers which have more uniform opinions about the service can help to reduce this heterogeneity. This stratification usually is conducted based on the social and demographic characteristics of the passengers. However, there are more advance techniques that permits to identify more homogeneous groups of users. One of these techniques is the Cluster Analysis, which is a data mining technique that can be used for segmenting the sample of passengers on groups that share some common characteristics, and that have more homogeneous perceptions about the service. This technique has been applied in other fields of transport engineering but it has never been applied for searching homogeneous groups of users with regards to service quality evaluation in a public transport service. For this reason, the aim of this work is to find groups of passengers that perceive the quality of the service in a more homogeneous way, and to apply to this clusters a suitable statistic technique that permit us to discover which are the variables that more influence the passengers¿ overall evaluation about the service. The comparison among the results of each cluster will show considerable differences among them and also with the results obtained using the global sample.This study is sponsored by the Consejería de Innovación, Ciencia y Economía of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) through the Excellence Research Project denominated Q-METROBUS-Quality of service indicator for METROpolitan public BUS transport services . The authors also acknowledge the Granada Consorcio de Transportes for making the data set available for this study. Likewise, Griselda López wishes to express her acknowledgement to the regional ministry of Economy, Innovation and Science of the regional government of Andalusia (Spain) for their scholarship to train teachers and researchers in Deficit AreasDe Oña, R.; López-Maldonado, G.; Díez De Los Ríos, F.; De Oña, J. (2014). Cluster Analysis for Diminishing Heterogeneous Opinions of Service Quality Public Transport Passengers. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 162:459-466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.227S45946616

An Ordered Regression Model to Predict Transit Passengers’ Behavioural Intentions

[EN] Passengers’ behavioural intentions after experiencing transit services can be viewed as signals that show if a customer continues to utilise a company’s service. Users’ behavioural intentions can depend on a series of aspects that are difficult to measure directly. More recently, transit passengers’ behavioural intentions have been just considered together with the concepts of service quality and customer satisfaction. Due to the characteristics of the ways for evaluating passengers’ behavioural intentions, service quality and customer satisfaction, we retain that this kind of issue could be analysed also by applying ordered regression models. This work aims to propose just an ordered probit model for analysing service quality factors that can influence passengers’ behavioural intentions towards the use of transit services. The case study is the LRT of Seville (Spain), where a survey was conducted in order to collect the opinions of the passengers about the existing transit service, and to have a measure of the aspects that can influence the intentions of the users to continue using the transit service in the future.De Oña, J.; De Oña, R.; Eboli, L.; Forciniti, C.; Mazzulla, G. (2016). An Ordered Regression Model to Predict Transit Passengers’ Behavioural Intentions. En XII Congreso de ingeniería del transporte. 7, 8 y 9 de Junio, Valencia (España). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1008-1015. https://doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2015.3199OCS1008101

Quality of service in public transport based on customer satisfaction surveys: A review and assessment of methodological approaches

The growth of literature in the field of quality of service in the public transport (PT) sector shows increasing concern for a better understanding of the factors affecting service quality (SQ) in PT organizations and companies. A large variety of approaches to SQ has been developed in recent years owing to the complexity of the concept; the broad range of attributes required to evaluate SQ; and the imprecision, subjectivity and heterogeneous nature of the data used to analyse it. Most of these approaches are based on customer satisfaction surveys. This paper seeks to summarize the evolution of research and current thinking as it relates to the different methodological approaches for SQ evaluation in the PT sector over the years, and provides a discussion of future directions.This study is sponsored by the Conserjería de Innovación, Ciencia y Economía of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) through the Excellence Research Project denominated “Q-METROBUS-Quality of service indicator for METROpolitan public BUS transport services”

Perception of Public Transport Quality of Service among Regular Private Vehicle Users in Madrid, Spain

Urban traffic levels can be reduced by drawing travelers away from private vehicles (PV) over to using public transport (PT). This modal change can be achieved by either introducing restrictions on PVs or by introducing measures which increase people’s satisfaction with PT. Many studies have shown that quality of service affects customer satisfaction which, in turn, influences the behavioral intentions toward the service; however, these studies have mainly concentrated on PT users. This paper intends to identify the main attributes which influence the perception PV users have about the PT services provided in Madrid (Spain). Ordinal logit models have been applied to an online panel survey with a sample size of 500 regular PV users. To achieve a comprehensive analysis and to deal with heterogeneity in perceptions, 15 models have been developed for the entire sample and for 14 user segments. The results indicate that the inhabitants are satisfied with PT in Madrid and that the most important PT service attributes for PV users are frequency, speed, and intermodality. Frequency is an important attribute for all the segments, whereas speed and intermodality are important for most of the segments. An analysis by segments has identified attributes which, although not important in most cases, are relevant for specific segments. Another interesting finding was that there are two attributes (accessibility and individual space) that were not found to be important in any segment. Findings from this study can be used to develop policies and recommendations for persuading more PV users to use the PT services

Bayesian networks and structural equation modelling to develop service quality models: Metro of Seville case study

Service Quality (SQ) in Public Transport (PT) has been a crucial aspect to improve for years because of its strong influence on user satisfaction and its capacity to attract new passengers. Different techniques have been applied for analysing SQ and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is one of the most widely used due to its ability to address different kinds of variables and to model a whole phenomenon occurring at one time. Nevertheless, its confirmative nature requires previous knowledge, a hurdle that can be overcome by applying Bayesian Networks (BN) as a technique that learns directly from data without pre-assumptions. The aim of this paper is to apply a novel methodological approach in the field of SQ, based on a two-step process, which combines the techniques of BN and SEM, to model SQ in the Metropolitan Light Rail Transit (LRT) Service of Seville (Spain). In other words, in this paper, the proposed methodological approach has been applied to extract and confirm, directly from data and without necessity of assumptions, the possible relationships among the LRT service characteristics and how they are related with passengers’ overall SQ perception. For this purpose, firstly, a BN was automatically learnt from the data and allowed to establish relationships between SQ dimensions describing the service. SEM was then used to check the SQ model and the relationships between the dimensions extracted from the BN. The model fit parameters of SEM and its consistency with the real life expected scenario supported and validated the SQ model designed in this study. Furthermore, the different relationships among dimensions extracted from BN were analysed and support the usefulness and potential of this methodological process that could lead to the development and confirmation of new theories and models in any field of knowledge based on data and expert supervision

Perceived service quality in bus transit service: A structural equation approach

This paper proposes a methodology for evaluating the quality of service perceived by users of a bus transit service. A Structural Equation Model (SEM) approach is used to reveal the unobserved latent aspects describing the service and the relationships between these aspects with the Overall Service Quality. Data from a Customer Satisfaction Survey conducted by the Transport Consortium of Granada (Spain) are analyzed. A total of 1200 surveys were collected, and two passengers’ statements about the Overall Service Quality were gathered: the first one when passengers have not reflected on the attributes describing the service, and the second one after they have thought about them. This is the first time that the Overall Service Quality of a public transport system has been jointly explained by these two overall evaluations when a SEM approach is adopted. Some interesting results have been obtained. Three latent variables were identified representing the main characteristics of the service. The unobserved latent construct obtaining the highest weight on Overall Service Quality is Service, while Comfort and Personnel have little influence. The passengers’ evaluation better explaining the Overall Service Quality is the evaluation made when passengers have reflected on the service. The findings of this research can provide operating companies and transport managers valuable information for designing appropriate transport policies attracting new passengers and retaining the current ones

Transit passengers’ behavioural intentions: the influence of service quality and customer satisfaction

Knowing passengers’ behavioural intentions to use transit service can be a useful support for transit managers and marketers who can define the most convenient strategies to satisfy existing passengers and attract new ones. We retain that analysing passengers’ intentions to continue to use transit services in the future together with relevant concepts such as service quality and customer satisfaction is fundamental to understand passengers’ behaviour. For this reason, in this paper we propose a structural equation model for investigating on the relationship among some aspects influencing passengers’ behavioural intentions towards the use of transit services. The light rail transit (LRT) of Seville (Spain) offers the transit service supporting our work. We collected through an ad-hoc survey the opinions of the passengers about the used LRT system and transit system in general, and we propose a methodology to explain how passengers’ opinions influence their intentions to use the LRT again. Among the interesting findings from the model, we observe that behavioural intentions are mostly affected by passengers’ judgements about LRT service quality and their satisfaction with the service. Moreover, not only direct but indirect effects on behavioural intentions are derived, determining an accurate conclusion about the relationships of the other concepts with LRT’ users behavioural intentions

A Composite Index for Evaluating Transit Service Quality across Different User Profiles

This paper evaluates the quality of service of the metropolitan Metro of Seville (Spain) across different user profiles, as determined through cluster analysis. Service quality evaluation is performed using a composite index that combines the user point of view with the service operator point of view. The combination of these two types of service quality measurement fulfils the need to provide a reliable measurement tool for transit performance. Six user profiles were identified, and it was ascertained that they have different opinions about the service, with heterogeneous gaps between the points of view among the six user profiles

Finding service quality improvement opportunities across different typologies of public transit customers

Existing approaches dealing with customer perception data have two fundamental challenges: heterogeneity of customer perceptions and simultaneous interrelationships between attitudes that explain customer behaviour. This paper aims to provide practitioners with a methodology of service quality (SQ) evaluation based on public transit customers behavioural theory and advanced market segmentation that deals with these two fundamental challenges. The original contributions of this paper are: the definition of customer typologies based on advanced customer segmentation with latent class clustering; analysis of the effect of SQ perceptions on behavioural intentions within the behavioural theory framework that considers multiple attitudes simultaneously affecting customers’ intentions; identification of transit service improvement opportunities for specific customer typologies as well as common to most customers. Our research shows practitioners and researchers that specific needs and perceptions of customers can be identified by using advanced segmentation. We applied our method to a light-rail transit service in Seville, Spain. We measured the direct effects on behavioural intentions of the LRT SQ, customer satisfaction and, in the case of some customers, the available transportation alternatives. Other observed that attitudes of customers were indirectly related to behavioural intentions as well. We found customer agreement around these LRT SQ aspects of tangible service equipment, accessibility, information, individual space and environmental pollution. Customers clearly showed different opinions related to safety, customer service and availability

WELDMAP: A Photogrammetric Suite Applied to the Inspection of Welds

This paper presents a new tool for external quality control in welds using close-range photogrammetry. The main contribution of the developed approach is the automatic assessment of welds based on 3D photogrammetric models, enabling objective and accurate analyses through an in-house tool that was developed, WELDMAP. As a result, inspectors can perform external quality control of welds in a simple and efficient way without requiring visual inspections or external tools, and thus avoiding the subjectivity and imprecisions of the classical protocol. The tool was validated with a large dataset in laboratory tests as well as in real scenarios