Benedetto Barabino

Measuring service quality in urban bus transport: a modified SERVQUAL approach

Purpose – The paper adapts and applies a modified SERVQUAL approach compliant with the EN 13816, a European standard on service quality in public transport. The purpose of the study is to provide a quality evaluation tool readily usable by transport operators willing to certify the service offered.Design/methodology/approach – Correspondence between the SERVQUAL and the standard is ensured by guaranteeing that the 15 attributes investigated encompass the eight macro‐areas of the norm. Primary data were collected by means of an on‐board survey conducted in Cagliari over a two week period.Findings – The study shows the possibility to implement a SERVQUAL approach abiding by the requirements set by the EN 13816. The results illustrate a high degree of importance placed on attributes such as on‐board security, bus reliability, cleanliness and frequency, with these latter three characterized by the widest negative gaps between perceptions and expectations. The sole quantitative supply of transport does not see...

Regularity diagnosis by Automatic Vehicle Location raw data

Bus regularity is a crucial factor for high frequency public transport systems, because it represents a relevant measure of quality of service for both users and transit agencies. Low regularities for users are associated with bunching phenomena or large gaps between buses, which result in low attractiveness of the service for transit agencies. Therefore, evaluating the regularity is extremely desirable, but may also be a complex task in medium-size cities due to the huge amount of data which must be collected and processed effectively. Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) technologies, which are particularly used by transit agencies in Western Europe, can address the data collection problem, but they involve several challenges such as correcting anomalies in collected raw data and processing information efficiently. In this paper, we propose a method to automatically handle AVL raw data for measuring the Level of Service (LoS) of bus regularity at each bus stop and time interval of any high frequency route. The results are represented by easy-to-read control dashboards and graphs. We discuss the experimentation of this method in a real case study to provide insights into the detailed characterization of bus regularity. The method is applied to data obtained from the transport agency CTM in Cagliari (Italy), whose vehicles are all equipped with AVL technologies.

An Offline Framework for Handling Automatic Passenger Counting Raw Data

Knowledge of ridership data on bus routes is pivotal for the quality and efficient operational planning of public transport companies. Automatic passenger counting (APC) can represent a powerful resource for supporting this activity, because it can provide a databank of accurate counts. However, relevant challenges, such as the matching of data to the bus stop, data validation, tackling anomalies, and building intelligible performance reports, must be faced in order to make APC data a mainstream source of information. This paper proposes an offline framework for addressing these challenges. In order to illustrate a possible application of the framework, its use for setting bus frequencies is investigated. The results are represented by easy-to-read control dashboards composed of tables and graphs. The methodology is experimentally tested with data records provided by the bus operator CTM in Cagliari, Italy. Finally, we discuss the implications on service rearrangement.

Rethinking Transit Time Reliability by Integrating Automated Vehicle Location Data, Passenger Patterns, and Web Tools

This paper investigates time reliability at bus stops. Although it is typically evaluated from the transit providers viewpoint, it must also account for passengers, as required in recent service-quality norms. Hence, data on both bus arrival (or departure) times and passenger arrivals must be collected and processed. Automated vehicle location (AVL) systems can collect bus data, but several challenges must be addressed to effectively use them. Passenger arrival data can be collected by surveys or direct observations and processed to derive patterns. This paper proposes two novel time reliability metrics: the percentage of passengers receiving regular service (PPR) and the percentage of passengers receiving punctual service (PPP) for regularity and punctuality evaluations, respectively. They are determined by a methodology that collects and handles AVL data, computes passenger patterns from passenger arrival data, and integrates AVL data and patterns. Experiments highlight the viability of the novel evaluation metrics using about three million of real-world AVL records. Their results are reported by straightforward Web tools. A comparison with traditional metrics shows that PPR and PPP provide a more careful evaluation by using the passenger as a normalization basis for their outcomes. In the new paradigm of demand-oriented services, the proposed metrics are crucial to quantify the ability of operators to serve passengers.

Face to face and telephone interviews as competing yet complementary methods to elicit information

Face to face (intercept/at home) and telephone surveys have been thoroughly investigated in the service industry literature. Regardless of this, the so far limited studies in the public transportation sector do not state clearly which method yields the better results. Besides, evaluating the more appropriate data collection mode is a complex task, due to the many constraints imposed (e.g. time, budget, and so on). This paper will critically compare the results of two different surveys conducted in 2012 within the Cagliari metropolitan area by the local transit agency CTM, with the chief goal to evaluate which of the two administration methodologies produces the more reliable results. A total of 500 fairly long interviews with CTM’s users and 714 short interviews with non users were collected through the telephone survey, whilst the on-board intercept survey resulted in 3173 interviews. The most significant strength of the telephone methodology referred to the possibility to reach non users and to elicit information on the reasons behind their decision to rely solely on private transport. On the other hand, the main strongpoint of the on-board methodology has regarded the high representativeness of the data collected, rich in information and qualitatively reliable. Therefore, the two approaches do not exclude each other, with on-board and telephone surveys that might be targeted at users and non users, respectively. Finally, this paper is expected to improve the knowledge of existing and likely demand for bus operators and offers valuable lessons for public transport agencies worldwide.

An Offline Framework for the Diagnosis of Time Reliability by Automatic Vehicle Location Data

Time reliability problems are unavoidable, owing to the stochastic context in which bus services are operated. Therefore, characterizing their reliability and understanding possible sources of unreliability provides an opportunity to keep buses on schedule and/or maintain planned headways. Measuring time reliability is technologically feasible by automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems, which can collect disaggregated data on the delivered service and disclose information on its performance. This paper proposes the first offline framework applicable to any bus route in order to accurately characterize the bus stops and the time periods in which reliability is insufficient, and to disclose the systematic unreliability sources from collected AVL data and select preventive strategies, accordingly. The framework is tested on the real case study of a bus route, using about 40 000 AVL data records provided by the bus operator CTM in Cagliari, Italy. The experimentation shows that this framework can be adopted by transit managers for accurate reliability analysis.

Automatic recognition of “low-quality” vehicles and bus stops in bus services

AbstractA recent interest in transit service analysis resulted in advances in the monitoring of public transport quality from the passenger’s viewpoint. Several frameworks were proposed to show where and when different quality levels occur, but there has been no focus on determining which vehicles and bus stops lead to low-quality performance in bus services. This paper proposes a framework that: (i) performs a simple data collection on selected parameters on passenger activities at bus stops (e.g., consulting posted information) and in-vehicle (e.g., validating the ticket). This data collection is performed by Secret Shoppers on Origin-Destination pairs representing paths travelled by passengers, (ii) proposes two new algorithms detecting criticalities for each route and parameter, and (iii) shows the vehicles and bus stops for which some targets are not met. These steps result in the first framework that can help build operational plans guiding the correction of criticalities arising in the delivered bus services. This framework is deeply investigated and discussed in a real-life Italian case.

Web Architecture of a Web Portal for Reliability Diagnosis of Bus Regularity

In high frequency transit services, bus regularity—i.e., the headway adherence between buses at bus stops—can be used as an indication of service quality, in terms of reliability, by both users and transit agencies. The Web architecture is the entry point of a Decision Support System (DSS), and contains an environment designed for experts in transport domain. The environment is composed of tools developed to automatically handle Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) raw data for measuring the Level of Service (LoS) of bus regularity at each bus stop and time interval of a transit bus route. The results are represented within easy-to-read control dashboards consisting of tables, charts, and maps, able to perform fast AVL processing and easy accessibility in order to reduce the workload of transit operators. These outcomes show the importance of well-handled and presented AVL data, in order to use them more effectively, improving past analysis done by using, if any, manual methods.

Time Reliability Measures in bus Transport Services from the Accurate use of Automatic Vehicle Location raw Data

Archived automatic vehicle location (AVL) data are widely used in bus transportation, but typically contain anomalies, such as missing data points and unseen bus overtakings. These anomalies may alter the measurement of time reliability (i.e., headways and schedule time deviations) of buses at stops with respect to passenger experiences. However, in many studies, anomalies are ignored, neglected, or partially addressed. This paper investigates the effect of AVL anomalies on headways and schedule deviations, which are keys for regularity and punctuality evaluations and are well-practicized among bus operators worldwide. The analysis is carried out on six scenarios, each representing a combination of AVL data anomalies. The outcomes show that addressing anomalies result in more severe regularity measures, which point out criticalities suffered by passengers, whereas it can be skipped for the measurement of punctuality. In addition, an increase of 5% of missing data results in the increase of 5% in the coefficient of variation of the headway, but it does not lead to meaningful variations in punctuality measures. These results are useful for both practitioners interested in passenger-oriented measurement of time reliability and researchers working on the disclosure of the determinants of unreliability. Copyright

Tomo II : La valutazione come riferimento per la pianificazione : Cagliari e il suo contesto - MAVC : una metropolitana automatizzata per l'area vasta di Cagliari

1. Premessa Il rapporto presenta una proposta di piano per la realizzazione del progetto Metropolitana del Consorzio Trasporti e Mobilità di Cagliari. Dopo aver ricostruito la struttura della domanda di trasporto e le caratteristiche funzionali degli elementi della rete, sono state simulate le interazioni tra le prestazioni del sistema dei trasporti e i comportamenti degli utenti nelle diverse dimensioni di scelta della mobilità: frequenza e destinazione degli spostamenti, modo di trasporto ed itinerario seguito sulla rete. La soluzione progettuale proposta ha come obiettivo la realizzazione di un intervento che si inquadri e si integri con i sistemi di trasporto esistenti, realizzando condizioni di connessione stradale e ferroviaria con altri servizi di trasporto presenti nell’area in esame (FS, CTM, FdS) in una logica di intermodalità. Pertanto, sulla base delle indicazioni ora esposte, si inserisce la presente proposta, nel quadro programmatico degli interventi sulla viabilità dell’intera area vasta, dove oltre alla necessità di potenziare le infrastrutture di tipo stradale, una particolare importanza assume la realizzazione di una linea metropolitana, che garantirebbe l’inserimento dell’area vasta di Cagliari nel contesto nazionale delle grandi opere per il trasporto collettivo di massa.