Passenger Transportation Processes' Performance Measurement ...

7. - 9. 11. 2012, Jeseník, Czech Republic, EU

PASSENGER TRANSPORTATION PROCESSES PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM. A CASE STUDY OF ROAD TRANSPORT. Agnieszka TUBIS1, Sylwia WERBIŃSKA-WOJCIECHOWSKA2 1

International University of Logistics and Transport, Wroclaw, Poland, e-mail: [email protected] 2

Wroclaw University of Technology, Wroclaw, Poland, e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract The focus of this study is on the problems connected with road passenger transportation process performance measurement system development. Thus, the main definitions and briefly literature overview in the analyzed research area are given. Later, the main classification of road passenger transportation processes’ performance measures are developed. There are presented obtained performance analysis results in comparison with the knowledge about the case company present condition. Keywords: passenger transportation, road transport, performance measurement system. 1.

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, when average companies are overfilled with information, managers seek new, reliable tools which give them accurate data in a simple and fast way. As a result, in the area of logistics’ processes management performance, there can be observable the increase of importance of performance measurement systems. The known logistics measures are usually implemented in the area of operational processes connected with information and material flows performance, benchmarking analyses, logistic audits, or logistics’ systems effectiveness analyses. Measurement system implementation is also practical to be used in enterprises during controlling process performance [20]. The range of conducted measurements mainly depends on informational requirements of enterprise which develops the chosen measurement system. The performance analyses may regard to whole enterprise activity or only to chosen company’s critical processes. The obtained data’s use area can be also much diversified. Information, gathered during performed analyses, may be used for operational processes improvement, may be provided to Public Control Institutions, or simply may be the base during cooperation with company’s customers. The investigated problem is especially important in the area of road passenger transportation processes performance. The growing competition at regional, national, and international transportation markets, as well as difficult performance conditions make, that transportation companies are more interested in gathering and analysing data being necessary to make a more efficient decision in the area of transportation and logistics services performance. Additionally, transport providers have a necessity of regular reporting connected with performed services. These issues make that the focus of this study is to define the guidelines for measurement system dedicated for road passenger transportation systems. Following the Introduction, the paper is organized as follows: in the Section 2 and Section 3, a literature overview of the transportation system’s performance measures and main measures classification in the analyzed research area are provided. On this background, guidelines for road passenger transport performance measurement system are developed. Thus, in the Section 5, there are presented obtained performance analysis results in comparison with the knowledge about the case company present condition. Later, there is provided a briefly summary.


2.

TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM’S PERFORMANCE MEASURES – LITERATURE OVERVIEW

Transportation system impacts stakeholders in different ways. For example, travellers are concerned with their travel time, transportation service providers strive to meet their financial constraints, and communities focus on safety and environmental issues. Conflicting interests make the traditional economic evaluation methods such as benefit-cost analysis, inadequate to concurrently capture multiple perspectives that are important for the performance assessment of transportation systems [22]. In the literature, there can be found lots of measurement systems dedicated to transportation systems performance analyses. A comparative survey of the literature on production and cost frontiers for public transit operators is given e.g. in [1]. Moreover, a comprehensive research analysis of public transit performance in chosen Polish city is provided in [2]. The Oregon Department of Transportation compiled a list of 750 performance measures that encompasses different policy areas including mobility, accessibility and sustainability [15]. According to a set of working definitions of sustainability in transport, Jeon and Amekudzi recommended a three-dimensional sustainability framework including economic development, environment preservation and social development, and provided a list of performance measures for each dimension [7]. Litman in his work [11] also suggested a list of economic, social and environmental indicators for assessing sustainable transportation. Tsolakis and Thoresen [18] suggested a four-dimension performance framework, which accommodates a range of community values and viewpoints including economic, social, safety and environmental concerns, stressing the importance of community participation and public openness in road performance evaluation. Falcocchio [5] presented a conceptual framework for more effective development and application of performance measures in transportation system evaluations, where the interests of customers, community, transportation providers and professional societies are included. There are also developer studies on the measurement and understanding of customer satisfaction (e.g. [17]), quality of service provided for railway operators’ passengers (e.g. [14]), efficiency and effectiveness measurement in transport (e.g. [9, 10, 21]), or developing performance indicators for multimodal transportation system (e.g. [13]). The implementation of DEA model for bus services provision are investigated e.g. in [12], or [16]. Other methods use in measuring transit performance are provided e.g. in [4, 8]. Excluding measures of service effectiveness, there are two broad quantitative approaches to performance measurement [6]: 

use of financial measures such as profitability or rates of return,



productivity measures (ratings of output production relative to input use).

Justification of logistics performance measurement systems development is connected with the necessity of logistics processes rationalisation. This problem requires measure analysis carrying out and, following this, effectiveness of logistics processes estimation and verification [20]. 3.

PASSENGER TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM – CLASSIFICATION OF PERFORMANCE MEASURES

Researchers in their works usually are focused on the issues connected with qualitative and quantitative measurements in the area of passenger transportation system performance. Following this, based on the literature overview, authors developed their classification of performance measures in the analyzed area (Fig. 1). The examples of measures which may be analyzed in the defined performance measures groups are given in the Table 1.


Fig. 1. The main groups of measures in the area of passenger transportation system performance [2, 3, 20] Table 1. The examples of performance measures [2, 3, 14, 16, 22] No. 1

Performance measures group Qualitative measures

2

Safety measures

3 4

Social measures Economical measures

5

Measures of traffic engineering

6

Measures of effectiveness

Exemplary measures Cleanness Servicing measures:  personnel behaviour/appearance  service frequency Passenger comfort:  average temperature at bus  seat comfort and rest possibilities Passenger information:  availability of pre trip/trip information System safety:  safety during trip  safety at station Average number of traffic convictions per driver in year Proportion of vehicles less than 5 years old 6 Mechanical failures during operation per 10 bus vehicle km in year Number of fatal accidents Number of major/minor injury accident 6 Fatal accidents per 10 bus vehicle - km in year Number of passengers with normal/concessionary tickets Average transportation cost per course Average income per course Total cost per passenger Average vehicle speed Average passengers’ trip distance Average passengers’ travelling time Average number of passengers per course/vehicle Maximal number of passengers getting on/out vehicle Maximal/minimal number of passengers per course Vehicle miles travelled Schedule reliability


There is a necessity to underline, that the groups of performance measures interpenetrate each other. Good example regards to the measures of system safety. On the one side, they are estimated subjectively by passengers. On the other side, they are correlated with safety measures, which are estimated objectively based on e.g. rolling-stock age or number of accidents. Moreover, some of measures being classified to one group may be used to estimate measures being defined in other groups of measures. Following this, few measures of traffic engineering are the base for calculating e.g. the measures of effectiveness. This mutual dependency is especially important in the area of logistics performance measurement system development because of logistics management interdisciplinary. Thus, to make logistics analysis, there is a necessity to gather qualitative, engineering and economic data. 4.

PERFORMANCE MEASURES – ROAD TRANSPORT CASE

As it was underlined in the Introduction section, the measurement system definition is dependent especially on the informational requirements of research analysis stakeholders. In the article, authors are focused only on those requirements which are necessary for transportation companies’ managers for optimal decision making in the area of transportation services performance. The road passenger transportation companies performance analyses made by the International University of Logistics and Transport showed that the main focus of those companies is on economical aspects of their transportation activity. Prepared financial reports are usually necessary for company officers. However, such information cannot be used by managers to monitor the accuracy of transportation processes performance and logistics processes planning. As a result, authors decided to develop the guidelines for road passenger transport performance measurement system. The main issue when defining the requirements for accurate performance measurement system is connected with manager’s decision process improvement. To reach this goal, the gathered information should be actual, accurate and reliable. As a result, transportation companies have to carry out performance analyses systematically and periodically. Thus, the main logistics measures composition cannot be too expanded because of financial reasons. When it is assumed, that the main logistics process in analyzed companies is defined as a support of passenger transportation process performance, the performance analyses may be narrowed down to only four group of measures monitoring (Table 2). Table 2. The main performance measures for road passenger transportation companies No. 1

Performance measures group Measures of transportation profitability

2 3

Supply and demand adjustment measures Customer service measures

4

Transportation safety measures

service

Measures name Average number of passengers per course Average transportation cost per course & vehicle type Average/maximal level of vehicle filling up Average travelling time per one course Transportation timeliness Course frequency Travelling information availability Average number of traffic convictions per driver in year Average number of accidents per route

The time between inspections T of the measures defined in first three groups should be not longer than three months. The definition of period T is connected with the occurrence of seasonal characteristics in transportation processes performance, like holiday seasons, or winter seasons. Such the seasonal demand trends should be taken into account during management decisions making. Moreover, such an inspection


action frequency let road carrier adjust to changeable transportation service market without too much incurred costs and time. The last group – transportation safety measures should be monitor once a year. The defined in Table 2 performance measures groups were surveyed by regional road passenger carriers performing in Lower Silesia in Poland. Asked transportation managers responded, that the defined performance measures are possible to analyzed in a given T period and such analyzes do not require the necessity of additional costs bearing. Moreover, there should be also underlined that the proposed measures (Table 2) are only the core of logistics performance measurement system because they included only the universal information necessary for an average passenger carrier performance. The developed measurement system may be extended with the use of additional measures necessary from the company’s performance goals achievement or transportation service market type. Exemplary, when the company is focused on high quality achievement and maintenance, it should analyse passenger information and passenger comfort measures once a year. 5.

CASE STUDY

A case regards to carried out research analysis of transportation service performance on chosen regional route in Lower Silesia (Poland) between Wroclaw city and City X. The road passenger transportation carrier divided the analysis into two stages. At first stage, the passenger satisfaction level was determined with the use of surveys. The analysis included following measures, like travelling frequency, transportation timeliness, vehicles capacity, travelling comfort, travelling regularity, service reliability, passenger safety, information availability, and public transport availability. The second analysis stage was connected with quantitative measurement performance made in the randomly chosen vehicles and routes. The gathered data regarded to e.g. number of passengers per course, number of passengers travelling between bus stops, and transportation timeliness. As a result, the research analysis was carried out with the use of subjective and objective methods. The common elements of both the analysis stages regarded to transportation timeliness. The comparison of obtained results showed, that almost 80% of passengers appraised timeliness at good/very good level. However, the gathered objective data indicated, that on the one side the majority of departures were on time according to timetables. On the other, the majority of arrivals at stations were not accurate. The chosen results are given in Tables 3 and 4. Such differences in measure’s estimation level cannot be easily explained by researchers. One of the reasons may be connected with passenger travelling time, which is longer than one hour at regional routes. In this situation, 10 minutes incorrectness in time schedule is acceptable for passengers. However, this example serves to illustrate, that transportation carriers should make multi-criteria performance analyses to provide accurate travelling services for their passengers. Table 3. Disproportion between timetables and vehicles departures First station departures

> -10 min

(-10 ÷ 0) min

0

(0 ÷ +10) min

> +10 min

Wroclaw - City X

0%

8%

70%

19%

3%

City X - Wroclaw

2%

7%

64%

19%

8%

Table 4. Disproportion between timetables and vehicles arrivals Last station arrivals

> -10 min

(-10 ÷ 0) min

0

(0 ÷ 10) min

> +10 min

Wroclaw- City X

2%

20%

3%

41%

34%

City X -Wroclaw

2%

22%

8%

44%

24%


6.

SUMMARY

The performance analysis process plays an important role in many transportation management decisions. The developed work is to be the starting point of the considerations about future research, connected with logistics performance measurement system development for road passenger transportation companies. More detailed research analysis is given in [19]. LITERATURE [1]

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[2]

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[3]

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[4]

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[5]

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[11]

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[22]

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