How Best to Serve Seniors on Existing Transit Services

Details

• Creators:
  Koffman, David ; Salstrom, Roger
• Corporate Creators:
  Mineta Transportation Institute
• Corporate Contributors:
  California. Department of Transportation ; United States. Department of Transportation. Research and Special Programs Administration
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  Aged Customer Service Elderly Persons Fixed Routes Public Policy Public Transit Surveys
• Publication/ Report Number:
  MTI Report 01-04 ; FHWA/CA/OR-2001-23
• Resource Type:
  Research Paper
• Geographical Coverage:
  California ; Western States
• Corporate Publisher:
  Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies
• Abstract:
  Increases in the size of the elderly population and changes in travel patterns are expected to create significant new mobility expectations. The research documented here is intended to provide tools for transit providers and public policy makers to make the greatest use of existing transit resources to serve mobility needs of the growing senior population. The research demonstrates how customer satisfaction surveys can be used to set priorities for improving existing fixed route services. The primary analysis technique used is the impact score technique. This method determines the relative impact of various improvements on overall customer satisfaction. It does this by measuring how much customers’ overall satisfaction changes depending on their satisfaction with particular aspects of service. Satisfaction data from rider surveys from three West Coast transit systems were analyzed, comparing the responses of seniors and non-seniors.
  
  Many of the results are specific to individual transit systems; however, a number of general patterns were observed: 1) in general, seniors appear to rate service attributes more highly than do non-seniors; 2) while importance scores for non-seniors tended to cluster together, the results for seniors appear to indicate that certain service attributes are significantly more important than others; 3) at the two systems that used a similar method of survey administration and question format, there is broad consistency in importance ratings for seniors. Among the most important attributes at both systems were drivers, reliable equipment, and on-time performance.
  
  Direct questioning suggests that the greatest increase in ridership would result from adding service. However, the impact analysis shows that other improvements could have a greater impact on customer satisfaction.
  
  
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  65W136
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:898ebdcc6a249781a10d22db0d691b03fc0167899dcb3e9e732b1f136c90e18b
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/14794/dot_14794_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 258.03 KB ]