Factors affecting travelers' satisfaction with rail transit systems

Ensuring a high traveller satisfaction level in public transportation systems is a vital goal for managers and decision-makers working for municipalities/city governments. Accordingly, transportation service providers need to recurrently assess the quality of their service to determine its adequacy and effectiveness. Providing public transportation services to millions of people, Istanbul Municipality conducts regular surveys to assess the perception of Istanbulers on the quality of public transportation. In this study, we analysed the data obtained from one of these surveys administered to people who use the rail transit lines. We particularly focused on the set of questions that covers the following five dimensions: comfort, fee, safety, accessibility, and overall travel satisfaction. There were 6646 participants answered questions related to these five dimensions. Using the structural equation model, we explored the effects of comfort, fee, safety, and accessibility on travellers’ overall satisfaction with the rail transit lines. We used two step modelling. The CFA (confırmatory factor analysis) model (CFI =.99; SRMR=.017; RMSEA =.026) and proposed structural model (CFI =.98; SRMR=.019; RMSEA =.031) showed close model fit for the data. We found that travellers’ perceived level of comfort, accessibility, and fee affordability has a significant effect whereas the perceived level of safety does not have a significant effect on passengers’ general satisfaction with the rail transit lines.