A multicriteria approach for analysing railway service quality

The objective of this work is to propose a useful tool to the decision makers for verifying transit service quality and establishing the most convenient transit service. Specifically, multiple criteria decision methods are proposed to evaluate a number of rail routes, on the basis of users opinions and a set of variables describing the quality of the service. The criteria adopted in the analysis represent service quality attributes such as safety, cleanliness, comfort, regularity and punctuality of the runs, information. We analyse the services offered by rail operators in the Northern Italy; specifically, 11 regional lines connecting the city of Milan to other towns of the hinterland are analysed. The analysis is applied by using data collected in a survey conducted in June 2011 and addressed to a sample of more than 16,000 passengers. We obtained interesting results from the application of two different methods of multi-criteria analysis.