Railway service quality in northern Italy: A multilevel synthetic assessment

Abstract

In order to reasonably assess the railway service quality, a multilevel extensible assessment model is proposed based on the matter element theory and the extension theory. The proposed model is applied to a real case study of some railway lines. The matter element to assess the railway service quality is established on the basis of the characteristics of passenger transit which included 7 primary assessment indices and 26 senior assessment indices. The index weights are determined by the passengers who were interviewed on board during their journey. Railway service quality is assessed by the values of the correlation degree of the matter element with all the assessment grades. The multilevel extensible assessment method can fully reflect the distance between the overall railway service quality or one kind of service attribute and the assessment grades and then it can realize the continuous assessment. The method can provide not only the passengers' overall satisfaction degree on the railway service quality but also the passengers' satisfaction degree on one assessment index.

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

“…(2) What are the recommended strategies for improving the user satisfaction and availability of service comprises several factors, including service provision, frequency, network coverage, and parking facilities. The frequency of service is, of course, a key factor for passengers in the availability of public rail transportation and has an impact on passenger satisfaction [29,30]. In fact, Mouwen [2], Tyrinopoulos & Antoniou [23] and Shen et al [28] argued that public transport users perceive frequency as the largest determinant of whether they would be willing to depend less on motor vehicles and adopt public transport [36].…”

“…Availability of service refers to the service provided by the public rail authorities. The analysis of the findings of previous studies shows that Promet Das et al [21] Weinstein [22] Tyrinopoulos & Antoniou [23] de Oña et al [24] Khalid et al [25] de Oña et al [26] de Oña et al [27] Shen et al [28] Eboli et al [29] Fu et al [30] Machado et al [31] Yanık et al [32] Yilmaz, & Ari [33] Šipuš & Abramović. [34] Environmentally friendly √ √ √ To summarise this section, the ease of access to stations and the ease of transfer are also important factors for the satisfaction of passengers using railbased public transport.…”

“…Public sector rail transportation authorities have to focus on two essential aspects of ticketing in an attempt to persuade the public to use their service: ticket prices and types of tickets. Travel price is, of course, one of the primary determinants of satisfaction with any public transport service [26,30]. Generally, a lower ticket price contributes to enhancing passenger satisfaction and increasing rail travel uptake.…”

Assessing Customer Satisfaction of Urban Rail Transit Network in Tianjin Based on Intuitionistic Fuzzy Group Decision Model

“…de Oña et al (2015) used the method of classification and regression tree to analyze different perceptions among different groups of passengers of transit service [13]. Fu et al (2017) proposed a matter elements and extension method to evaluate the railway service of Italy; meanwhile, the correlation degree can describe the satisfaction degree of passengers [14]. Eboli et al (2018) used the passengers' satisfaction survey data to analyze the spatial component in the evaluation of transit service quality, and the results showed that there was strong relationship between the single service aspects and the overall service quality from the passengers' perception [15].…”

“…Normalization of the intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrix of passenger evaluation information, where the benefitfocused type includes ( = 1, 2, ⋅ ⋅ ⋅ , 12,14,16,17,19,20), and the cost-focused type includes ( = 13, 15, 18). Therefore, we can use (4) to convert cost-focused type to benefit-focused type.…”