Exploring the Commuters’ Willingness-to-Pay and Its Influencing Factors for an Improved Public Bus Service in Dhaka City

Improved transportation services are a crucial component of urban growth, particularly in emerging cities like Dhaka. Ensuring an improved public bus service quality is a challenge for the city’s transport planners and policy makers. Nevertheless, this challenge can’t be met without the support of the residents of this city. This study intends to evaluate the commuters’ willingness to pay (WTP) for an improved and better public bus service quality in Dhaka city. It also attempts to explore the factors affecting the commuters’ WTP amounts. In order to accomplish the study’s goals, a stated preference survey was designed to enquire into the whys and wherefores of female passengers’ harassment on public buses and also to prefer some influential service quality features. WTP values of respondents were calibrated using binary and ordinal logistic models, and these models were developed using SPSS version 26. The results indicate that the majority of respondents were willing to pay more for better service facilities, and they point to security as the most important factor in determining how much extra fare commuters are willing to pay. The results also demonstrate that commuters’ WTP amounts are highly influenced by the respondents’ monthly income. Results from this study have important policy implications, such as protecting women’s safety on public transportation and taking commuters’ socio-demographic characteristics into account before enacting any legislation or increasing fares.

An Analysis of the Women Commuters’ Satisfaction in the Public Bus Service in Bangladesh: A Survey on Local Buses in Major Cities

Bangladesh is one of the most populated developing countries where public bus service plays a vital role as a public transport mode since it is easily available and cost-effective. In the social, commercial, educational, and administrative spheres, women’s participation in the labor force in economic enterprises is steadily expanding in the country. Very little research considers only women commuters to analyze the service quality of public buses and they selected only Dhaka city as a study area. However, a large number of trips were generated by women commuters in the industrial and commercial zones such as Gazipur, Narayanganj, and Dhaka. This paper ascertains the public bus service attributes that affect women commuters’ satisfaction as well as finds out the major problems of women commuters while traveling on public buses and the possible solutions to them. This survey included 766 women commuters from Dhaka, Narayanganj, and Gazipur who were interviewed face to face. Structural Equation Model (SEM) was used as the instrument for identifying the service quality (SQ) attributes that influenced the women commuters’ satisfaction. A series of models were developed based on the trial-and-error method and the model M3 is selected as the best fit according to SEM fit indices values. The study’s main goal was to compile a list of service quality attributes that influence women commuters’ satisfaction. Major issues with the current public bus service in terms of safety and security, as well as remedies, were identified through discussions with experienced female commuters. These findings reveal that women commuters’ satisfaction is primarily influenced by safety and security, as well as the degree of comfort provided by bus service because they frequently encounter major safety and security issues on public buses and want an immediate remedy. This paper offers some potential strategies for addressing the issues, which may prompt policymakers to pay more attention to these aspects in transportation planning.

Gap Analysis between Women Passengers’ Perception and Expectations about Bus Service: A Case Study on Bangladesh

Since public bus service is frequently available and reasonably priced in major cities of Bangladesh including Dhaka, the capital city, a significant number of economically active women regularly commute to work utilizing public buses. Since female commuters experience unique challenges compared to their male counterparts, a gap analysis on the perception of men and women, as well as the difference between the female commuters’ perceptions and expectations, could help to pinpoint the issues. The aim of this paper is to determine the gap between female commuters’ perceptions and expectations of bus service quality in Bangladesh, as well as the current perception of both male and female passengers. In this paper, the data obtained is studied to determine the service quality needs which should be improved by analyzing the perception and expectation gaps for female passengers. SERVQUAL models were used to examine the disparities between perceptions and aspirations in Bangladesh’s major cities. Tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy are the five dimensions of SERVQUAL. The data for this study was collected from 1500 commuters in Bangladesh’s largest cities, including Dhaka, Gazipur, and Narayanganj. Primary data was gathered using a purpose-built questionnaire survey. The Gap values are negative in all dimensions, according to the findings of the study. In the data analysis, a negative gap value indicates that the expectation exceeds the perception. According to the gap analysis, the quality of bus service for passengers is insufficient. Bus service quality is seen and expected to be quite varied. It is vital to improve bus service to meet the needs of women. The findings could be valuable in planning future transportation policies that take female commuters’ needs into account.

Timetable optimization for single bus line based on hybrid vehicle size model

This study proposes a flexible timetable optimization method based on hybrid vehicle size model to tackle the bus demand fluctuations in transit operation. Three different models for hybrid vehicle, large vehicle and small vehicle are built in this study, respectively. With the operation data of Shanghai Transit Route 55 at peak and off-peak hours, a heuristic algorithm was proposed to solve the problem. The results indicate that the hybrid vehicle size model excels the other two modes both in the total time and total cost. The study verifies the rationality of the strategy of hybrid vehicle size model and highlights the importance of the adaptive vehicle size in dealing with the bus demand fluctuation. The main innovation of the study is that unlike traditional timetables, the arrangement of the scheduling interval and the corresponding bus type or size are both involved in the timetable of hybrid vehicle size bus mode, which will be more effective to solve the problem of passenger demand fluctuation. Findings from this research would provide a new perspective to improve the level of regular bus service.