How to capture the passengers’ point of view on a transit service through rating and choice options

In this paper, a methodology for capturing the transit passenger’s point ofview by using both rating and choice options is proposed. For this purpose, somediscrete choice logit models are introduced; the models allow the probability of choice ofsome alternative transit services to be calculated, and the importance of each serviceaspect to be determined. The models are calibrated by using data collected by a surveyin which a stated preferences experiment was proposed to a sample of passengers, andsome judgements were expressed by them about their transit services, in terms ofperceptions and expectations. The introduced methodology provides a relevantcontribution from a practical viewpoint because it allows the identification of the mostimportant aspects on overall service quality; it is useful to the transit operators formeasuring service quality and for investing on the various service aspects in order toeffectively improve transit services.