Διερεύνηση του βαθμού ικανοποίησης των επιβατών από τις υπηρεσίες των Μέσων Μαζικής Μεταφοράς της Αθήνας και της επίδρασης της οικονομικής κρίσης στη χρήση τους

Abstract

This thesis refers to the investigation of the perception of public transport users in Athens, specifically bus, about service quality. A questionnaire survey was conducted on bus users and the collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, as well as specialized statistical models in order to determine the changes that took place with corresponding data from earlier stages of the economic crisis. The results of the analysis indicate that users choose the bus as their main transport mode mainly to travel to/from work or for education purposes, which justifies the fact that the majority of the passengers use the bus very often or even daily. The shift to bus is caused for the most part due to the excessive cost of commuting by car and the economic conditions in the country. Nevertheless, passengers expressed their dissatisfaction with some factors they consider important, such as the existence of a bus lane, on-time performance and service frequency, as well as the on-board safety and conditions. Despite the fact that the public transport network is considered mediocre from approximately half of the passengers, the bus seems to be gaining the users’ trust, which is captured by the increased use of the bus of the 61,7% of the passengers compared to 3 years ago. The analysis of the data in the context of a scientific publication, was able to compare qualitative characteristics throughout the different stages of the economic crisis and offer some important findings. The conditions of the terminals and stops seem to affect the overall user satisfaction more during the conduct of this survey in relation to the previous time periods. Identifying the factors that can contribute to the improvement of the public transport service quality is one of the main incentives for conducting this survey but also for the establishment of an integrated evaluation system for public transport.