A temporal survey on perceived quality in urban public transport: analysis of the Italian regions from 2002 to 2012

This paper focuses on various aspects of perceived quality of LPT services and the relation among quality, use and satisfaction with the ticket price. Elaborating data provided by ISTAT in the 2013 survey “Aspects of daily life”, we develop an indicator of perceived quality of urban public transport, measuring the progress made at the regional level in last ten years. Following a customer-based approach, we consider the opinions of the users on the service and formalize a methodology to compare an indicator over time, through a structured approach that can be replicated in different urban contexts. The survey results highlight (i) an increase in the overall levels of user satisfaction in Italy between the first observation (2002) and the second one (2012) ; (ii) a very limited relation between perceived quality and use both in the first and in the second year of observation ; (iii) a positive and increasingly strong relation between perceived quality and satisfaction with the ticket price ; finally, (iv) no relation between the satisfaction with the ticket price and the use of local public transport in both years considered. This work aims to suggest effective ideas for action to LPT companies and Public Administration, by breaking up the abstract and all-encompassing concept of quality into its single constituents, and analysing them more precisely. On the foreground we put the concept of mobility as a “system” and not as a loose set of individual components.