Evaluating users’ satisfaction in public transit service: a case of Addis Ababa city, Ethiopia

Rapid urbanization has resulted in a slew of issues, including urban transportation, in most emerging countries' cities. Public transportation provides transportation for the community and plays an important role in the daily lives of the city's citizens, particularly the urban poor, by reducing travel costs and providing job opportunities. Thus, evaluating public bus service performance from the perspective of users is critical for identifying service operators' strengths and deficiencies. Consequently, the primary goal of this research is to determine the level of consumer satisfaction with public bus service in the city and identify the most important factors that influence satisfaction. Hence, a survey was carried out between December and January 2020. Stratified sampling approaches were used to obtain data from 500 travelers. Factor analysis and customer satisfaction index were used to analyze the data collected. Lastly, the findings show that users were quietly satisfied (0.54) with the quality of the bus services supplied in the city. Moreover, travelers were better satisfied with attributes that related to availability (0.64) and less satisfied with attributes under timeliness (0.50) and security (0.48). Therefore, service operators and other concerned stakeholders should give urgent attention to attributes under timeliness and security to enhance users’ satisfaction in the provision of bus service in the city.