The Scottish Government

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Main Findings

• In general, levels of bus passenger satisfaction across Scotland were high. Ratings were particularly high (above 85%) for accessibility of bus stops, ease of fare paying, personal safety on the bus, provision and visibility of handrails, and the demeanour of the driver. There were a few aspects of service quality where passengers were relatively less satisfied (between 75 to 80%); namely state of the roads, cleanliness of bus stops, information available at bus stops, provision of bus stop shelters and value for money.
• Respondents aged 60 or over had a higher satisfaction level than those under 60 with all bus service aspects, bar bus stop accessibility and provision/ visibility of handrails. A large difference in satisfaction between age groups was observed for value for money: respondents aged 60 and over were approximately 20% more satisfied than those under 60. This may have been influenced by the national minimum concessionary fare.
• Those using the bus three or more times per week (frequent users) exhibit little difference in satisfaction compared with those who use the bus less, with the exception of service reliability and information provision at the bus stops, where frequent users were less satisfied.
• There was little difference between respondents with access to a car and those without with regards to bus passenger satisfaction. Respondents from households with at least one car available were slightly more satisfied with ease of boarding/ alighting, bus stop information and cleanliness of the bus stop and less satisfied with the state of the roads than those respondents without access to a car.

Introduction

In November 2002 and 2003 a survey was carried out across Scotland aimed at assessing bus passenger attitudes towards their local bus services. These surveys are part of an ongoing assessment of satisfaction and attitudes towards Scotland's bus services, with similar surveys carried out every year.

The aim is to monitor changes in satisfaction levels, which will be fed into other statistical monitoring of the bus and coach market. This will provide a more rounded picture of local bus services, and will enable future decision making and policy development to take account of passenger's needs and preferences.

Methodology

Bus user focus groups provided the key inputs to the development of the survey questionnaire; this ensured that the survey covered all aspects of bus services which passengers are concerned about. These focus groups were also instructive in focusing the attitudinal questions on the service aspects most important to bus passengers, and that the vocabulary used in the questionnaire would be familiar.

The survey comprehensively covered the key aspects of local bus services, using passenger's experiences of one particular recent journey. This enabled bus passengers to clearly focus on their experiences when responding to questions relating to their attitudes regarding the bus service they are familiar with.

Telephone interviews were on average 18 minutes in duration and were undertaken of a representative sample of bus passengers over 15 years of age that had travelled locally on a bus at least once during the preceding month. The interviews were carried out in accordance with the MRS code of conduct and quality assurance criteria.

Passengers are asked to state their level of satisfaction regarding around 30 aspects of the journey they are considering, using a rating scale of 5 (very satisfied) to 1 (very dissatisfied). The ratings were then averaged and multiplied by 20 to provide the results presented here. Also shown is the composite average that is useful to present and characterise a "Scottish" experience.

Respondents were selected from a series of pre-selected postcode sectors throughout Scotland to ensure that there was an even coverage of urban/rural respondents and between the regions of Scotland. The four urban/rural classifications (or typologies) adopted for the study were:

• Large urban settlements with over 125,000 population
• Other urban settlements with populations between 10,000 and 125,000
• Accessible small towns and rural locations with populations of less than 10,000 within 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more
• Remote small towns and rural locations with populations of less than 10,000 with over 30 minutes drive of a settlement of 10,000 or more

The regions of Scotland covered by the study were:

• Highlands & Islands
• Grampian
• Central, Fife and Tayside
• Lothians
• Strathclyde
• Scottish Borders and Dumfries & Galloway

Within each area and typology a quota control was applied to the data collection and this was based on:

• Age - (16-59/60+)
• Gender - (male/female)
• Frequency of bus use - (infrequent/ frequent)
• Car ownership - (no car in household/ at least one car in household)

General demographic data is also collected, as is information on trip purpose.

The sample interviewed in November 2002 and 2003 was 1,754 and 1,756 respectively, the age distribution of each sample is given in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Age distribution (numbers) in November 2002 and 2003

Car ownership characteristics amongst the sample are collected in order to identify any differences regarding satisfaction amongst those who do and do not own a car. In both surveys the majority of the sample has access to a car as illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1: Percentage Car Ownership levels for November 2002 and 2003 samples

Results

The average overall satisfaction was found to increase from 84 to 86 between the two surveys.

The surveys revealed a notable increase in satisfaction level for several aspects of service in "Large Urban" and "Other Urban" typology zones, Table 2. Both types of urban typology zones had a notable improvement in satisfaction with information prior to travel. Comparison of the November 2002 and 2003 data found a notable decrease in satisfaction level in "Remote" typology zones with the frequency of the bus service.

The most notable changes between respondents of different age groups were for value for money and information prior to travel, Table 3. Respondents aged 60 and above gave a notable increase in their satisfaction level with the value for money aspect of the bus service, from 89% in the 2002 survey to 94% in 2003; this may have been influenced by the national minimum concessionary fare. Younger respondents (aged 16 to 59) had a satisfaction rate of 75% in both surveys for the value for money aspect. A notable increase in the satisfaction rate of respondents aged 16 to 59 for information prior to travel was observed between the two surveys. The other service aspects surveyed observed a very slight increase in satisfaction levels between the surveys.

Table 4 gives full details of satisfaction rate changes disaggregated by bus usage. There was a notable increase in the satisfaction rating for information prior to travel and shelter provision in the frequent use group (more than 3 times per week). In the infrequent users group (less than 3 times per week) there was a noticeable rise in the satisfaction rating for information prior to travel.

The surveys showed respondents with access to one or more cars increased their satisfaction rate with regards to information prior to travel and ease of paying fare (ergonomics) from the 2002 survey to 2003, other service aspects only received a slight increase, Table 5.

Respondents from non car owning households slightly increased their satisfaction rate between the 2002 and 2003 surveys for most service aspects, bar value for money and information at the bus stop. Value for money observed a decrease from 84% to 80% for respondents without access to a car and information at the bus stop decreased from 77% to 73%.

The satisfaction ratings by household income, Table 6, showed a notable increase in satisfaction between the November 2002 and 2003 surveys for the following service aspects: overall service; information prior to travel and ease of fare paying. The surveys revealed a drop from 84% to 80% in satisfaction relating to value for money for those respondents with annual incomes of less than 15,000.

In addition to disaggregating the survey results by typology, age, bus usage, household car ownership and income, the study also looked at the results on a regional basis. The regional results are available in the full report of survey.

Statistical analysis carried out in SPSS revealed that the major factors, statistically significant at a 5% level, appear to be age and complaint, which are determinant for several service aspects.

People who had made previous complaints were significantly less satisfied than those who had not, which could suggest that complaints are not being dealt with in a satisfactory manor or that expectations for service quality are not achievable.

Respondents who were aged less than 60 were found to be significantly less satisfied with most bus service aspects than those aged 60 or over, especially with value for money. However, for ease of boarding/alighting the bus found the reverse to be true, those respondents aged less than 60 were significantly more satisfied than those aged 60 or above.

Conclusion

The key findings report is based on the November 2002 and 2003 survey carried out across Scotland to assess changing satisfaction and attitudes towards Scotland's bus services. It is intended to undertake further surveys to monitor levels of bus passenger satisfaction in November 2004 and 2005.

These surveys provide an interesting overview of passenger satisfaction levels. These are revealed to be high. They point to stable satisfaction levels over comparatively short periods, with the exception of older people's increased satisfaction with value for money which may have been influenced by the national minimum concessionary fare scheme. Any changes in satisfaction amongst bus passengers in general will be discernable following subsequent surveys.

Some of the results suggest that passenger satisfaction is a complex issue with the expression of each individual's satisfaction level depending on a number of factors (e.g. age, frequency of bus use, gender etc.). Generally high levels of satisfaction have been observed with a number of systematic differences clearly evident (e.g. increasing satisfaction with age). Interestingly, the results show that bus passengers will have levels of expectation with regard to individual features of their local services and that they perceive satisfaction within that context. For example, the levels of satisfaction expressed may not depend upon the frequency of service and this may be because passengers do not expect high frequency in remote areas and can be equally (or similarly) satisfied with a lower frequency as are passengers who live adjacent to high frequency services in large towns.

These surveys targeted a sample of the Scottish population who had travelled locally on a bus, at least once, during October/ November 2002 and 2003 the results do not therefore reflect the views of people who did not use a bus during these months.