An Integrated Approach to Measuring the Whole Journey Traveller Experience STS N°TRA2014 Paris 14-17 avril 2014 Oded Cats a, Yusak O. Susilo a, Rodica

TRA2014 Paris 14-17 avril 2014

An Integrated Approach to Measuring the Whole Journey Traveller Experience

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Oded Catsa, Yusak O. Susiloa, Rodica Hrinb, Andree Woodcockc ,Marco Dianad, Egle Speicytee, Eileen O’Connellf, Chiara Di Majog, Virginie Tolioh, Patricia Bellveri and Merja Hoppe j

aKTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden bIntegral Consulting R&D, RomaniacCoventry University, United Kingdom dPolitecnico di Torino, ItalyeSmart Continent Ltd, Lithuania fInteractions Ltd, IrelandgRSM – Roma Mobility Agency, Italy hFIA – Federation Internationale de I’AutomobileiITENE- Instituto Tecnológico del Embalaje, Transporte y Logística, SpainjZurich University of Applied Science, Switzerland

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Cats, Susilo, et al., 2014

Importance of Understanding What Really Matters

Providing an accessible transport service for all Different travellers have different needs and

priorities → influence their appreciations and satisfactions on various different quality factors of the provided services.

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Groups Special Characteristics Main Important FactorsFull-time employed workers

Regularly incur more temporal constraints than monetary expenditures

Punctuality, reliability, cost

Female travellers

Travel shy, reassurance seeker and cautious planner. Has a complex scheduling of activities in both time and space and is likely to bring luggage

Safe, reliable, affordable and comprehensive access

Parents with small children

Likely to be a female than a male, travelling with buggies and luggages

Accessible vehicle and station, on-board space and supportive attitudes

Low income travellersTend to be captive with the cheapest mode alternative and spent a significant proportion of his/her income for travel

Availability, adequacy, cost and safety

Children and young travellers

Smaller children highly dependent on their parents' decisions and preferences. For many young teens, travel represents a gateway to adulthood, enabling independence, socialisation and a recognition of maturity.

Practicalities (such as cost and speed of journey), flexibility and safety

Elderly travellers

Tend to have more limited ability and strength to move. The feeling of able to travel indepedently is closely linked with his/her sense of self-worth. They have increased difficulty in identifying signs, in reading timetables, listening to loudspeakers and to execute responses.

Physical and emotional barriers, affordability, flexibility, reliability and support facilities

Disabled travellers

Has physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his/her ability to travel. Lack confidence when travelling, experience a lack of flexibility in their travel choices and difficult to be spontaneous.

Physical accessibility and availability, support facilities (including information availabilities), cost, certainty and security and supportive attitudes

Tourists and unfamiliar travellers

Suffer lost-in-translation problem. Have a high mobility needs, but limited spatial and language knowledge

A simpler system, more information provisions and more helpful and tolerant staff


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Research Gaps

Complex interactions between instrumental and non-instrumental variables

There is a lack of knowledge on what really valued more and less by different group of travellers.

Most (if not all) of previous studies ignored the impacts of the access and egress legs to the overall travellers’ journey satisfactions. This may actually undermined the impacts of the quality of interchanges and last-mile facilities in influencing passenger overall travel satisfactions.

Relativity of experience measurements and impacts of the past.

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Aims

To investigate what really matters in influencing individual travel experience and how the satisfactions of access and egress stages correlate with the overall satisfactions of the trips. Door-to-door, multimodal, at individual trip stage level The impact of various aspects of travel experience and

trip stages on the overall satisfaction Variations among user groups (by gender, age, income,

mobility) Consulting the stakeholders and identify factors that

valued by different stakeholdersSTS N°


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Survey Design

Experiment: questionnaire, consisted of five sections: Individual attributes (socio-demographic, mobility behaviour) Attitudes (travel preferences, mobility-related opinions) Contextual variables (temporal, weather conditions, trip

purpose, subjective well-being indices) Underlying travel aspects (familiarity, adaptation, past

experience) Travel experience factors (availability, travel time components,

information provision, reliability, way-finding, comfort, appeal, safety and security, customer care, price, connectivity, ride quality, environmental impact and travel time productivity as applicable)

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Survey Results

554 participants Men (56%); Women (44%) Elderly and disabled travellers are under

represented Majority has access to car (64%), PT card (62%) and

bike (61%) PT travel frequency: daily (55%); 2-3 time a week

(16%); seldom or never (13%) 66% of all trips were multimodal, 2.44 trip stages

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Satisfaction by Modes

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CarBicycle

Walk

PT

Waiting and transfer conditions more prominent than vehicle-related aspects

Satisfaction with walking was weakly correlated with aspects included in the questionnaire


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Overall Journey Satisfaction

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The primary trip stage is very strongly correlated with entire trip satisfaction. The impacts of access and egress trip stages is marginal, but each of them is strongly correlated with the satisfaction from the primary trip stage.

Travellers that feel more passive are more likely to be satisfied with the service, giving everything else is the same.

Current satisfaction is very strongly correlated with the elements of past experience. It is even strongly correlated with the assertion that the chosen mode is the best mean of connection based on traveller’s experience.


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Satisfaction determinants by travellers’ group

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Variables Women Youth(-24)

Disabled Low income or unemployed

All travellers

Public TransportStation environment +++

NA

+++ (+) Waiting safety +++ Ease of transfer +++ Frequency +++ +++

On-board comfort + Travel time reliability +++ +++ +++ Car Reliability (+)

NA NA NA

Relative time +++ Safety +++ +++ Parking price +++ Bicycle

Prioritised on the street +++

NA

Absence of disturbances +++

Ride quality +++ +++ Information +++Walking Proper design +++ (+)

Absence of disturbances+++ (+) +++ +++

Smoothness (+) +++

• Past experience and travellers’ expectations are key determinants of passenger experience

• Individual traveller and trip characteristics do not seem to contribute significantly to explaining travel experience in most cases – with age and income being noticeable exceptions.

• Certain travellers groups such as women, young and low income or unemployed travellers have distinctive determinants of satisfaction with trip stages for various travel modes.

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Results from Stakeholders interviews and discussons

Operators were mostly interested and concerned about the impacts of detailed level-of-service related variables on passenger experience.

Planning authorities were more interested with wider general urban and public transport planning issues and the multi-modal travel patterns.

The special interest groups were understandably more interested with their detailed constituent’s interests.

The government’s research institutes were interested with more detailed trip patterns and behavioural variables that underlie the travellers’ decision making processes.

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Cities Operators Authorities Non-governmental’s special interest groups

Others (including universities and national research

institutes)Total

Bucharest 2 1 1 4Coventry 6 3 2 11Dublin 1 1 1 3Grevena 1 1Rome 1 1Stockholm 2 1 2 2 7Turin 3 3 2 8Valencia 2 1 3Vilnius 1 2 1 4Zurich 1 1 2EDF (Brussels) 1 1Total 17 12 9 7 45

Variables that are

Valued by Stakeholders

Most

Operator Authorities Special Needs Groups Other

Subjective Well-Being Subjective Well-Being

Attitudes and opinions towards mode-specific preferences, social norm, transfer preference, traffic congestions and pollutions and safe and secure feelings whilst travelling

The main purpose of the trip Trip arrival constraint The use of pre-trip information Carrying heavy or bulk item whilst travelling Familiarity with the trip

Satisfaction level towards to the current choice

The occurrence of disruption events and its impacts

Detailed trip stages, including waiting and on-vehicle time and speed, travel time, punctuality Detailed time reliability perception

Detailed trip stages, including waiting and on-vehicle time and speed, travel time, punctuality

Information acquisition Information acquisition

Time utilisation on-board and at stops Time utilisation on-board and at

stops

Overall satisfaction in general and compared to the his/her expectation and towards other mode alternatives and possible modify the choice

Passenger satisfaction on: service availability (frequency and stop location), travel speed (both subjective and relative speeds), information at stations and on-board, information about ticketing, comfort (quality on on-board, fellow travellers, seat availability, seat comfort, easiness to buy ticket, crowding both at stops and on-board, station facilities), appeal (physical environment, vehicle quality, cleanliness both at stations and on-board), safety (at stops and on-board), overall reliability (including regularity and punctuality), personnel availability at stops and on-board, price (value-for-money and fairness), connectivity (network-wise and easy transfer), travel sickness, and environment issue.

Parking price and easiness to find parking spot

Travel experiences among car travellers, which include the reliability, travel time, speed and information provision, parking provisions and fees.

Travel experiences among cyclists, which include the feeling of safe and being prioritised on the road, availability of the relevant information, route connectivity and the availability of bicycle parks at the destinations

Travel experiences among pedestrians, which include the quality and design of the pedestrian paths, feeling secure and safe while walking and the availability of relevant information

Open Suggestions to improve travel experience

Gender, Age, Disability information, household composition, income and education information

Special group needs, include way-finding, accessibility, stress, travel information and lighting availabilities.

Access to public transport card

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Summary of the Findings

Different user groups have distinctive determinants of satisfaction Individual traveller and trip characteristics do not seem to contribute

significantly to explaining travel experience in most cases – with age and income being noticeable exceptions.

A large share of the variation is explained well by a limited set of factors – except for walking. Satisfaction with public transport is however significantly more

complicated than any other transport modes. Past experience, expectations, attitudes and emotional states

are significant explanatory variables of travel satisfaction Variability on trip stages is important

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Variable Definition CommentsPrimary variables

Travel time Actual time components including access, waiting, in-vehicle/moving and egress times (as applicable).

Could be measured directly from traveller’s position data

Subjective travel time Perceived time components Direct questioning could be contrasted against measured travel time

Station environment The appeal and safety of the physical waiting environment

Relevant for public transportSafety and security are particularly relevant for women travellers

Personnel Availability and responsiveness of personnel at stops and on-board

Relevant for public transportSubjective satisfaction levels

Ease of transferring Quality of interchange (coordination, transfer design, accessibility, connectivity)

A complex notion that requires a more detailed investigation of interchange quality factors

Physical design The presence of physical hindrances, appropriate and thoughtful design and the surface quality.

Relevant for active modesRequires an inventory for classifying design quality

Secondary variablesInformation The availability and quality of pre-trip and en-route

information Relevant for all modes except walking. Requires a careful classification of information sources (type, trip stage, comprehensiveness)

Availability Service frequency and span, service coverage Could be derived from the respective public transport agencies and GIS analysis

Reliability Service punctuality/regularity and travel time predictability

Relevant for public transport and carCould be derived empirically from data on travel time distribution

Comfort and appeal Seat availability and comfort, availability of facilities, vehicle appeal, cleanliness at stops and on-board and travel sickness

Relevant for public transportA combination of subjective satisfaction levels and an inventory of characteristics

Safety and security The perceived risk of being exposed to traffic-related or an intentional act of hostility

Relevant for all travel modesSubjective risk levels that could be contrasted against reported safety and security incidents

Parking availability Ease of finding an available parking place Relevant for car. Could be measured empirically through the parking search time.

Way-finding and vehicle accessibility

Physical and mental barriers associated with travelling – in particular, vehicle design (low floor, priority seat) and way-finding (orientation)

Relevant for special mobility groupsAccessibility could be checked against fleet allocation and composition

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Next Steps

In METPEX project itself: Selecting the key variables (together with results

from stakeholder interview) Developing a prototype to measure real-time travel

experience (smartphone app) EU-wide benchmarking

Autumn 2014: Large scale survey in Stockholm and 7 other European cities

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TRA2014 Paris 14-17 avril 2014

An Integrated Approach to Measuring the Whole Journey Traveller Experience

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[email protected]; www.metpex.eu

Acknowledgement: The data that used this is study was collected as a part of the on-going EU FP7 METPEX (MEasurement Tool to determine the quality of the Passenger EXperience) Project (www.metpex.eu, FP7-SCP2-GA-2012-314354). There are also partners from several institutions which involves in data collection activities. This includes teams that led by: Andree Woodcock (Coventry University), Gabriela Rodica (Integral Consulting R&D), Marco Diana (Politecnico di Torino), Egle Speicyte and Ieva Markuceviciute (Smart Continent Ltd), John Poter and Eileen O’Connell (Interaction Ltd), Chiara Dimajo (RSM), Laurianne Krid and Virginie Tolio (FIA), Dolores Herrero (ITENE) and Merja Hoppe (Zurich University of Applied Science).

Documents

An Integrated Approach to Measuring the Whole Journey Traveller Experience STS N°TRA2014 Paris 14-17 avril 2014 Oded Cats a, Yusak O. Susilo a, Rodica