Quality Assessment of Regional Railway Passenger Transport

Abstract

The passenger transport sector in the European Union today is very customer-oriented. Transport operators have recognized that having a satisfied customer means a passenger will return to use the service again and so increase the overall income of the transport operator. In railway passenger transport over the last decade, there have been efforts to place the passenger in the focus of the railway transport process, but the overall effort has been very slow. The primary focus is usually on railway lines with great demand, especially high-speed train lines and national train lines. Various methodologies that support this effort are different methods of quality of transport services. Quality is a fundamental influence on services in passenger transport. One of the most useful methods for assessing the quality of service is surveys. Surveys can be done from the passenger point of view but also from the transport operator’s point of view. During the past decade the level of service on regional railway lines in Croatia is relatively stable with a trend towards downgrading the level of service. One of the observations is there is no regular assessment of services and no interaction with passengers. This paper presents the results of a survey-based quality assessment of passenger transport services on a regional line in the north-western part of Croatia where a comprehensive survey identified how to maintain the existing level of service, some proposals on how to improve the level of service are also presented.