Assessment of the road and railway infrastructure and means of public transport by the aspect of the survey in the selected area of Poland

Abstract

The current socio-economic conditions of some developed and developing countries are not favorable for the development of the public mass transport services. Most of the residents of large and medium-sized cities, but also smaller towns, use their own passenger car on mandatory trips. This phenomenon perfectly reflects the constantly growing of motorization index in such countries. The consequence of this is, of course, the decreasing number of passengers carried by means of public mass transport, in particular operating outside of large urbanized areas. This causes and unfortunately will cause not only further problems of automotive congestion on the transport networks of urban areas, reduction of the road safety level, but also adverse environmental effects in the form of pollution. The authors of the article analyzed the results of transport surveys, which were carried out in recent years among the public transport passengers. The surveys concerned the assessments and postulates and expectations of passengers. The research was carried out in one of the typical in terms of socio-economic conditions of Polish voivodships (a country dynamically developing in the passenger transport sector, in terms of both mobility, as well as the quantitative and qualitative status of transport means and transport infrastructure). The voivodship subjected to such analysis was the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodship, located in the central part of Poland. The respondents were asked to speak on topics related to, among others, transport infrastructure, means of transport, access to services of public transport systems, comfort and safety of traveling. The analysis also included assessments and postulates related to tariff systems, travel information systems, and transport integration systems - functioning in the voivodship. The results of the research were analyzed by the rail passenger transport and bus passenger transport as part of the voivodship public transport system. In the majority of cases, passengers’ assessments were not satisfactory. The most frequently issued evaluations fluctuated only around the average (on a scale from 1 to 10). The authors have thoroughly analyzed the results of the transport survey, confronting the results obtained and trying to find out their causes depending on the characteristics of the area under analysis.