Determination of Level of Service for bus transit using method of successive interval scaling in Mumbai City

Study of commuters’ attitude towards public transport and their perception of existing service quality for different service attribute of public transport have gained immense importance for determining appropriate public transport service level. In this context, level of service (LOS) is identified as a vital tool to measure service quality, as per users’ perception, ranging from LOS A to LOS F which denotes ‘the best’ to ‘worst’ levels. However, the LOS existing benchmarks are defined as per the expert’s judgment. Method of ‘Successive Interval Scaling’ is used to develop LOS values for bus service as per users’ perception which converts ordered categorical scale into an interval scale. Service attributes are selected which are considered important for bus transit and LOS for each attribute is evaluated based on users’ opinion. The results obtained in this study for the city of Mumbai highlights the difference in LOS values between users’ perception and experts’ opinion given by Ministry of Urban Development in India (MoUD), India and the Transit Capacity & Quality of Service Manual (TCQSM).