An Ordered Logit Regression Model for Evaluation of Passenger Satisfaction of Shiraz Bus System

The rapid increase of motor vehicles and car ownership rates in urban areas has led to serious concerns such as increasing traffic congestion and air pollution. Public transport is an important solution for such problems. However, the current trend of passenger demand for bus shows a decreasing figure for bus market. Discovering such kind of problem is an important research issue. It seems that making public bus system more attractive and viable could increase the share of travelers choosing the bus as a sustainable mode of travel. This paper gives an attempt to survey a sample of passengers attending in all 11 bus transfer points throughout Shiraz Metropolitan area asking them to describe their satisfaction with current public bus system. The primary data was collected using a survey questionnaire. Then, several statistical analyses including correlation analysis, ordinal regression and test of parallel lines were applied to discover the factors affecting passenger satisfaction level. The following factors showed significant roles affecting passenger satisfaction: education level, car ownership, frequency of car use, bus headway and the frequency of bus usage. Furthermore, the analysis showed that frequent bus users were less satisfied with the current level of service confirming the necessity of improving the quality of the system