How to make service better? A review on developing service-oriented public transit systems

Improving service quality of urban public transportation systems is essential for attracting travellers. Ideally, building a service-oriented transit system requires holistic approaches on the closed cycle of measuring travellers’ perception of transit service, relating perceptions with supply factors, and making optimisation or improvement decisions with the goal of better service and lower cost. Separate literature reviews on transit service quality measurement and transit system optimisation were conducted previously, while there is no review investigating the consistency of service quality perceptions and optimisation approaches in an integrated manner. To fill this gap, we systematically reviewed existing contributions and examined the connections among transit service quality measurement, influence of supply factors on service quality and transit system optimisation. Results revealed gaps on goals of subjective passenger perceptions in existing optimisation methods as well as the need for embedding interplays between perceived service quality indicators and supply factors. Our research findings provide directions to future studies in this field, and we posit the importance of integrating human factors considerations in transit policy, planning and operation practices.