Study On Service Quality Evaluation Method Of High-Quality Bus Rapid Transit System Oriented To Passenger Demand

Based on bus dedicated lanes, BRT system quickly spreads in China with the implementation of public transportation priority development strategy. Good infrustruture needs better service, however, both the opration effect and passenger's satisfaction degree are not well because of different planning & design conditions and operation management level of different BRT system. That is to say, there are certain gaps between operation and planning targets of BRT system. Meanwhile, public transportation mode has some disadvantages compared with private trip mode, and passenger demands higher and higher service quality with the living standard improving. Therefore, it has great theoretical and practical signifincence to study the method of precisely evaluating BRT service quality, and then take relevant measures to improve operation level and increase the attraction of BRT.Based on the literature review, the paper starts with the analysis of BRT service characteristics and passenger's demand to high quality service. According to the process of passenger's trip decision, service quality indicators are chosen for two service grade (basic and advanced service quality indicators). Then a high quality-oriented evaluation indicator system of BRT is estrablished. The paper clearly puts forward that the high quality service needs the guarantee of a stricter evaluation method. The evaluation studies are oriented to two criterion layers of high quality operation service and passenger demand. The operation-oriented evaluation reflects the criterion of high quality service of public transportation, while the passenger-oriented evaluation reflects passenger's expectation toward service and what they actually received.In order to reflect the comprehensiveness and stringency, the paper applies four methods to evaluate the operation level of BRT. Firstly, the matter-element analysis model is used to evaluate the operation service quality with all the indicators (with no service grade). Secondly, both the basic and advanced service quality are evaluated by analytic hierarchy process. Thirdly, BRT service effiency model is established with the integration of basic service quality and advanced service quality. The application of multiple evaluation methods is the reponse of strict demand to BRT service quality. Finally, with the comparasion of different evaluation results, it is find tha the system service effiency model is the strictest evaluation method, which could be a valid evaluation method oriented to high quality service of BRT.The study of passenger demand-oriented evaluation of BRT is based on the PZB "gap of service quality" model. The paper establishes the BRT service quality gap model and founds six equations of waiting time indicator under five gaps. Focus on the service quality gap of passenger's expectation and percepation, a survey table is designed to response to the passenger's demand. Based on the field survey and statistics, three relationships are analyzed including the difference significance between user's expectation and perception of BRT, different attitudes to service quality of different passenger groups, and the uncertain causality between passengers' basic attribute and their cognition to service quality.The case study is carried out based on a BRT route in Jinan. It shows that the service convenience is not bad, while the service reliability and comfortableness are poor and the overall service quality is in a poor grade. There is significant difference between passenger's perception and expectation to BRT service. That is to say, BRT service doesn't achieve the demand of passengers. The comparative analysis of different evaluation results indicates some generalities and specialities. Firstly, the service efficiency evaluation is the integration for basic service quality (service of convenience) and advanced service quality (service of reliability and comfortableness). It's with stricter evaluation criterion and can well response to passenger's actual demand and the high quality service of advanced public transportation system. Secondly, the passenger-oriented evaluation results shows that some special passenger groups may have special demand to certain service, for example, female and elderly passengers have higher request to comfortaleness onboard, and passengers with higher income pay more attention to the driving stationarity of bus vehicle. Passenger's age attribute has the biggest effect to their attitude to service quality of BRT, and then is the profession and gender factors. Thirdly, the overall evaluation results on operation's view and passenger's view can keep consistency. But to the single questions, passenger-oriented evaluation results are often worse than the results oriented to operation. Finally, according to the systematic evaluations of Jinan BRT-3, the paper put forwards some improvement suggestions focus on the inadequate problems in operation and management to support the sustainable development of Jinan BRT system.