Improving the Service Quality of Public Transit with Exclusive Bus Lanes: A Perspective from Passenger Satisfaction

Linghui He,Jian Li,Dongyuan Yang,Arkatkar Shriniwas

doi:10.1155/2021/8599256

Abstract

Exclusive bus lanes have been widely regarded as an effective way to promote bus priority and improve the service quality, while they have not attracted more passengers to travel by bus in China. Also, more attention is usually paid to the infrastructure and facilities of exclusive bus lanes, but not much attention is paid to the passenger satisfaction of public transit with them. Therefore, this paper studies how to improve the service quality of public transit with exclusive bus lanes from a perspective of passenger satisfaction. A Structural Equation Model (SEM) was developed to investigate the mechanism of relationships between passenger satisfaction and the factors influencing the service quality of public transit with exclusive bus lanes. A total of 2087 respondents from Shanghai, China, participated in this study. Also, a comparison model of different groups using public transit including captive riders, choice riders, and captive by choice riders was established. Results show that passengers were dissatisfied with the current service of public transit with bus lanes, while they would prefer to take buses in the near future. In addition, travel environment, facilities, and convenience, rather than operational efficiency, had significant effects on passenger satisfaction. Through the comparison model, it was found that choice and captive by choice users might prefer public transit with bus lanes and captive users might be unable to bear the financial burden of private motorized travel. “Crowdedness in the buses on bus lanes during peak hours” especially for choice riders and “driving stability” especially for captive riders were the improvement direction for attracting more passengers to travel by bus. The results and the proposed policies of this study can benefit for the planning and operations of exclusive bus lanes in Shanghai and other similar cities around the world.

Highlights

Public transit has been considered as an effective way to reduce urban traffic congestion and pollution emissions. e Chinese government has long been committed to giving priority to the development of public transit
“Satisfaction of public transit with bus lanes” is the current attitude towards bus lanes, and “willingness to travel by public transport” is used to observe the attitude and tendency of bus passengers towards bus lanes in the future
Results of the General Model. e initial model of passenger satisfaction with bus lanes was established through the Structural Equation Model (SEM) approach shown in Figure 3. e coefficients of the model were estimated by using the whole data. e numbers attached to the solid lines represent the relationship between latent variables, and the ones attached to the dotted lines represent the relationship between latent variables and observed variables

Summary

Introduction

Public transit has been considered as an effective way to reduce urban traffic congestion and pollution emissions. e Chinese government has long been committed to giving priority to the development of public transit. A number of exclusive bus lanes have been constructed in China, they have not significantly benefitted the ridership of public transit and have not attracted much more passengers to travel by bus as expected [1]. It indicates that we do not know why the advantages of exclusive bus lanes cannot attract more people to travel by bus and what bus passengers really care about in terms of the service quality of public transit with exclusive bus lanes

Methods

Results

Conclusion