VARIABILITY OF THE PERCEPTION ABOUT SAFETY, COMFORT, ACCESSIBILITY AND RELIABILITY OF CITY BUS SERVICE ACROSS DIFFERENT USERS’ GROUPS

In this study, the service quality of the city bus service is estimated in terms of users' perceptions. The variations in the users' perceptions are studied across different users groups based on their income, sex, employment status, and vehicle ownership. A questionnaire survey is conducted and the data collected through this survey were analyzed by Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Path analysis to meet with the study objectives. It is found that four latent factors namely Safety, Comfort, Accessibility and Reliability affect the users' perceptions. The service levels of all these latent factors are estimated and the worst performing factor is found to be the Reliability of the bus service. Only the performance of the latent factor Accessibility is found to be merely above average. Further analysis of the data reveals that these perception factors are affected by the users' socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. The female respondents are found to be more concerned with Safety and Reliability of the service whereas for the male respondents the most important factor is found to be Comfort. The study also shows that with increasing income, respondents' priorities Comfort and Reliability over the other factors. For an employed user, Reliability and accessibility of the service are found to be the most important. The study also shows that an improvement of Reliability and Comfort is necessary to attract the non-transit users towards the bus service.