Abstract
Although bus comfort is a crucial indicator of service quality, existing studies tend to focus on passenger load and ignore in-vehicle time, which can also affect passengers’ comfort perception. Therefore, by conducting surveys, this study examines passengers’ comfort perception while accounting for both factors. Then, using the survey data, it performs a two-way analysis of variance and shows that both in-vehicle time and passenger load significantly affect passenger comfort. Then, a bus comfort model is proposed to evaluate comfort level, followed by a sensitivity analysis. The method introduced in this study has theoretical implications for bus operators attempting to improve bus service quality.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40064-016-1694-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Passenger comfort is an important index that can be used to measure the quality of public transport services and a crucial factor in residents’ choice of traffic mode (Dell’Olio et al 2011; Eboli and Mazzula 2011)
There are other factors affecting bus comfort (Eboli and Mazzulla 2007; Shek and Chan 2008), this study focuses on passenger load and in-vehicle time
To obtain the value of passenger comfort perception along with in-vehicle time under different passenger load factors, a two-day passenger comfort perception survey was conducted on July 31 and August 1, 2014, at Bus Line 63 in Harbin City, China
Summary
Passenger comfort is an important index that can be used to measure the quality of public transport services and a crucial factor in residents’ choice of traffic mode (Dell’Olio et al 2011; Eboli and Mazzula 2011). The quality of life in China has been increasing over the years, which in turn has led to the demand for higher levels of trip comfort. Improving bus comfort to attract more passengers and further alleviate traffic congestion has received much attention from bus operators and authorities (Zhang et al 2014). Elucidating the factors affecting bus comfort levels can help policymakers implement targeted improvement strategies. Comfort is one of the key factors leading to high service quality and significantly influences passenger satisfaction with bus transits (Eboli and Mazzulla 2007, 2009)
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