Determination of level-of-service scale values for quantitative bus transit service attributes based on user perception

Abstract

The need to assess service quality of existing transportation systems based on users’ perceptions has received increased attention in recent years. In this context, researchers have identified level of service (LOS) as an effective tool to measure users’ perceptions of service quality on a linguistic scale ranging from LOS A to LOS F which denote ‘best’ to ‘worst’ levels of service according to users’ perceptions. However, contrary to the definition of LOS that requires it to be measured based on user perception, the existing LOS benchmarks available for public transportation are based on expert judgment. This research attempts to develop LOS benchmarks for bus transit services based on user perception using the ‘Law of Successive Interval Scaling’ which converts an ordered categorical scale into an interval scale. The results obtained through this analysis for the city of Kolkata, India, highlight the difference in LOS scale values between developed and developing nations and between expert opinion and user perception.

Keywords:

• service quality
• level of service
• user perception
• bus transit
• successive interval scaling
• developing countries

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Sponsored Research & Industrial Consultancy (SRIC) cell of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, for funding the primary surveys conducted for this research.