A service quality analysis of Pakistan's first mass transit project: A case study of Lahore Metro bus service, Pakistan

Lahore, the second largest city of Pakistan, is encountering environmental degradation and traffic congestion issues. Few major reasons for the above said are absence of a respectable public transport system and large number of private vehicles roaming in the city. In reply to these issues, the Government of the Punjab province of Pakistan launched Lahore Metro Bus Service (LMBS) under ambit of Punjab Mass Transit Authority (PMA) in 2013. LMBS aims to provide safe, efficient, and comfortable urban transport network to its users. However, since its establishment there has been no evaluation to gauge its performance. Additionally, an added problem encompassing LMBS is that users have started to perceive the service quality of LMBS as insufficient, which is vindicated by reported news and few studies. PMA should understand what people want to see in LMBS. If PMA does not improve service quality of LMBS, its users might stop using it which would result in decrease in LMBS ridership. It gives birth to two questions as to which are the most significant service quality and user characteristics that influence the ridership of LMBS the most. Hence, it is imperative to comprehend the characteristics of service quality that might influence the ridership of LMBS. The service quality characteristics that are discussed in this study are Tangibles, Connectivity and Access, Reliability - Safety & Security and Cost & Fare. This research focusses on the perception of these service quality characteristics on the ridership of LMBS. The ridership of LMBS has been distributed in three levels in this study, based on how a user utilizes the service. These levels are frequent user, occasional user and seldom user. Likewise, in this study Socio-Demographic Characteristics and Characteristics of a Trip Maker are discussed as characteristics of the users that can have a likely influence on ridership of LMBS.

The objective of this research is to understand the impacts of perception of service quality and user characteristics on the ridership of Lahore Metro Bus Service, first mass transit project of Pakistan. This study further aims to contribute to a neglected aspect of service quality evaluation of LMBS.

It is an explanatory research and the primary research strategy used is quantitative survey method. By using questionnaires as research instrument, this study has collected 383 survey responses from online questionnaires only because LMBS was suspended. Furthermore, qualitative data was also collected via 8 online interviews from experts for sake of validation of the main data. The analysis of data has been done through ANOVA, SPSS, Frequency Analysis, Descriptive Analysis, Compare Mean Analysis and Cross Tabulation Analysis via Microsoft EXCEL.

The research findings elucidated that the users perceive the overall service quality of LMBS as fair with exception of seat availability and security standards. The results further concluded that tangibles, connectivity, and cost are the contributing factors of the ridership of LMBS. However, connectivity & access has the most significant influence on the ridership of LMBS. It can alter ridership by 58.3% with one unit increase in perception of the users. Another characteristic which largely influences the LMBS ridership is its fare. Its users are extremely satisfied with the affordability of LMBS. Similarly, all user characteristics were found to influence the ridership of LMBS positively except age, income, and ownership of a driving license. The ridership was found to be most significantly influenced by employment status and employment type. Lastly, the most important conclusion of this study is that ridership of LMBS is strongly influenced by perceived service quality and characteristics of its users and its users perceive the service quality as satisfactory/ good.

PMA must improve service quality aspects which are perceived as unsatisfactory by its users. PMA must also ensure periodic service quality evaluation of LMBS to retain its users and attract potential users. COVID-19 has resulted in extra ordinary circumstances and LMBS must be adaptive to cope up with the emergent challenges. The data acquired from this study can be used as a feedback for the transit authority to enhance the LMBS service quality and to improve the LMBS ridership.