Sustainable urban development entails decreasing reliance on private cars as a means of transportation and endorsing public transport use. Nevertheless, consistent evaluation and enhancement of quality of service is needed if public transport is to be made more appealing particularly to car owners. A comprehension of customers perceived and expected quality of service can highly benefit in knowing areas of incapability needing precedence for upgrading.
This paper uses the SERVQUAL model to analyze quality of service of public bus transport by evaluating perceptions and expectations of the quality of service to customers, and its influence on general customer contentment about Nottinghamshire’s public bus transport service.
An online survey resulted in 1306 responses, which was deemed statistically suitable for evaluation and it constituted 42.8% males and 57.2% females.
Findings from the study showed the existence of significant differences between customers perceived and expected quality of service ensuing in a level of dissatisfaction with the bus service. The most disapproval from respondents were in relation to the courteousness of drivers, fare and the punctuality of the service having −1.18, − 2.07 and −1.17 gap scores respectively. Of prime concern to respondents were the responsiveness of the service and reliability. Customers’ perceptions of quality of service was found to be more pivotal at improving the general contentment in the service. Perceptions of the frequency of the service and timeliness had notable association with general contentment.
Limitations of the research, suggestions to policy makers and for further work are indicated.
Sustainability of Public Transport in Nottinghamshire: A Look at Bus Service Quality
Advs in Intelligent Syst., Computing
Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility ; 2020 ; Skiathos Island, Greece June 17, 2020 - June 19, 2020
2020-11-04
12 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
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