Analysis of the Trans Koetaradja bus services considering latent variables of bus line services

Abstract

The Government of Aceh delivers a transport policy measure to combat autos dependency and severe traffic within the city by reforming conventional urban public transportation to modern bus system so-called the Trans Koetaradja (TK). The most critical issue for urban bus system is in how to maintenance existing users and attract new ridership’s. In this case, perceived service quality (PSQ) elements such as the easiness, comfort, and safety of bus system has an importance rule in determining user’s satisfaction. The PSQ is used in public transport planning and operation as a tool to establish the level of overall user’s satisfaction towards public transport services. Therefore, this study aims to examine the PSQ of the TK bus services by considering unobserved variable such as psychological indicators related to the bus line services from TK’s users. Revealed preference survey within 3 lines of TK was conducted in the mid of 2019. On board survey with a total of 450 samples were distributed and valid used in this study. The multivariate analysis of structural equation modelling so-called confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is used to deeply explore the behavioral intention of TK users toward the bus service attributes. The CFA result depicts that PSQ resulted to higher user’s satisfaction has significantly statistical relationship with the user intention to the bus services variables of “obedience when stopped”, “driver appearance”, “air condition”, “bus arrival time” and “the satisfaction of supporting bus facilities”.