TITLE:
Fuzzy Analysis and Evaluation of Public Transport Service Quality: A Case Study of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania
AUTHORS:
Erick P. Massami, Benitha M. Myamba, Leticia Edward
KEYWORDS:
Service Quality, Urban Public Transport, Entropy Method, Fuzzy TOPSIS, Dar es Salaam City
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.6 No.5,
September
28,
2016
ABSTRACT: Urban public transport plays a critical role in stimulating economic development of any nation since most of the revenues come from cities. The majority of the city dwellers of any country use public transport. The evaluation of public transport service quality provides a valuable feedback to commuter operators to ensure continuous improvement of level of service and to the government to take appropriate measures for enhancing the quality of public transport service. This paper analyses and evaluates service quality of Road Public Transport (RPT) (i.e. minibuses and buses) and Urban Rail Transport (URT) in Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. Since service quality and its attributes are intangible and vague, a fuzzy evaluation model is developed and applied. The formulated model is composed of Fuzzy Entropy Method (FEM) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The overall evaluation procedure is as follows: initially, an intensive literature search and experts’ opinions are employed to establish criteria for evaluating the service quality of public transport in Dar es Salaam City. The developed FEM is used to obtain criteria weight. Lastly, the formulated TOPSIS is used to provide an overall ranking of urban public transport service quality. The overall evaluation shows that urban rail transport outperforms road public transport in terms of service quality. Nevertheless, the urban rail transport service in Dar es Salaam City is currently not well developed as it is provided on very limited routes. Thus, the Tanzania government, the rail transport operator i.e. Tanzania Railway Limited (TRL) and the agency responsible for the provision of rail infrastructure i.e. Reli Assets Holding Company (RAHCO) are advised to design and employ Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) schemes i.e. concession contracts to invest more in rolling stocks, locomotives and rail wagons so that the rail transport service is available on many routes of the road public transport to bring fair competition between the two operators.