Service quality estimation and improvement plan of bus Service: A perception and expectation based analysis

City buses are one of the primary modes of public transport in most of the Indian cities. But because of the dissatisfaction regarding the bus service, the number of passengers in the buses are reducing. Therefore, quality of the city bus service is estimated based on users' perception of present service quality and perception of expected service quality. A questionnaire survey was carried out to collect the users' perception data. Data was analysed using factor analysis, path analysis and regression analysis to estimate the factor effecting users' perception. It is found that a gap in users' perception of present and expected service quality leads to dissatisfaction. Six performance indicators namely safety, vehicle condition & hygiene, comfort, reliability & convenience, information availability and reasonable travel expenses are found to effect user's perception of service quality. It is found that the users are having high dissatisfaction levels in terms of safety, comfort, vehicle condition & hygiene and reliability & convenience and information availability of the bus service. The categorical analysis of the data show that with increasing income and age, the users are more concerned with the safety, comfort and vehicle condition & hygiene than the travel expense. Female users are found to be more concerned with the safety and vehicle condition & hygiene of the service than the male users. Very few studies emphasised on perception of expected service quality along with the perception of present service quality. But in this study both the expectation and perception of the users are considered. Moreover, the categorical analysis of the data will be helpful in understanding priorities of different factors so that improvement can be done based on the priorities of the users.