Evaluation of passenger service within the area of Beijing west railway station Open Access

With the rapid development of society and the national economy in China, the urban scale has gradually expanded and the transportation demands of residents have increased accordingly. Because of its advantages of high speed and accuracy, railway passenger transportation once steadily ranked among the main passenger transportation method in China and shouldered the primary task of medium and long distance passenger transportation. Nowadays, with the increasing maturity of various transportation methods, the facilities and equipment of different transportation methods are gradually improved. Passenger demand for transportation service is no longer limited to simple spatial displacement but pays more attention to the service they could receive in the transport process. As a result, the competition in the passenger transport market has gradually shifted to the competition in passenger service quality.

As the primary object to intuitively experience railway passenger transport services, passengers are the ones who should get the greatest attention from railway passenger stations. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to evaluate the pros and cons of passenger service and improve the service quality from the perspective of passengers. As one of the three major stations of the passenger transport hub in Beijing, Beijing West Railway Station is responsible for the arrival, departure and transfer tasks of general-speed and high-speed trains. And under the pressure of the increasing passenger volume, Beijing West Railway Station has exposed many problems in its operation and management. High-quality passenger service and efficient passenger flow organization can help improve the operation level of the station. Therefore, it is of great significance to analyze the current work organization and service level of Beijing West Railway Station from the perspective of passengers and put forward corresponding optimization suggestions, so as to improve the work efficiency and organization level of Beijing West Railway Station.

Parasuraman et al. (1985) propose the service quality gap model and the service quality method. The establishment of the service quality (SERVQUAL) evaluation method marks the basic formation of the framework of the service quality evaluation theoretical system, which brings the service quality research to a new level. The method divides the relevant evaluation indicators by setting five dimensions and uses the gap between the actual perceived service and the expected service to determine the evaluation results. Zhang and Yao (2005) analyze the psychological factors of railway passengers and establish a comprehensive service evaluation index system on railway passenger transport upon psychological needs. The system highlights the important roles of emotional responding index, riding interest and intention index, as well as objective comprehensive evaluation index of passenger psychology in railway passenger service comprehensive evaluation.

Existing research on the management methods of railway passenger service quality mainly implements the passenger-oriented service concept. Regarding meeting passenger demands as the primary goal, the research implements passenger-centered service quality evaluation and uses the SERVQUAL theory to evaluate service quality. Nathanail (2008) puts forward the idea of constructing a railway service quality supervision system. Through the participation and evaluation of passengers, the quality of railway passenger services can be effectively supervised. The implementation of this idea would effectively improve the decision-making process of railway transport enterprises and the passenger service. Chen and Lin (2010) point out that passenger service quality hinges on the comparison between passenger perception of service expectation and the actual contrast, so the quality of service areas can be considered subjective. Therefore, the quality evaluation of railway passenger service depends on the experience of passengers. And the railway passenger transport companies may guide passenger expectation to satisfaction by the evaluation results.

Awasthi et al. (2011) present a hybrid method of SERVQUAL and fuzzy TOPSIS which can be used to evaluate service quality of urban transportation systems, and an application of the proposed approach for evaluation of service quality of metro in Montreal is provided. Chou et al. (2011) consider that human judgments are often vague and it is not easy for passengers to express the weights of evaluation criteria and the satisfaction of airline service quality using an exact numerical value, it is an appropriate method to use a fuzzy set theory for dealing with uncertainty. And the effectiveness of the fuzzy weighted SERVQUAL model is demonstrated by a case study of Taiwanese airlines. Cao and Chen (2012) use the structural equation model to analyze the relationship between the service quality of high-speed railway passenger transport and passenger loyalty. The results show that the passenger service quality is the factor which has the greatest impact on the image of the company. Passenger service quality also has a certain impact on passenger satisfaction and can radiate to the loyalty of passengers.

Gosh et al. (2017) use regression analysis to determine a model of passenger satisfaction, and a service quality performance matrix is constructed to demarcate between amenities that need to be improved and those that may be maintained. The validated model can be useful for policymakers in defining policies and strategies for improving platform-based amenities. Miranda et al. (2018) investigate whether different combinations of service quality dimensions affect railway customer satisfaction. An extension of SERVQUAL is used to analyze the responses from an online survey of 352 railway customers. And the results show that three different combinations of the service quality dimensions lead to overall customer satisfaction. Luke and Heynes (2020) use the SERVQUAL evaluation method to promote the public transportation service, the research is of value to transport service providers in understanding the gaps in and requirements of their service provision. And it also highlights the dissatisfaction in the current levels of public transport service to the policymakers, as well as provides some indication of areas in which future interventions can be directed. Chen and Chang (2021) study the passenger service by the passenger evacuation ability in the railway station and put forward the investigation and analysis in station field, including service facilities utility and evacuation capacity from the perspective of the station.

This research makes effort to improve the service quality of Beijing West Railway Station and better serve passengers, thereby increasing the competitiveness of Beijing West Railway Passenger Transport in the transportation market. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the survey design and data source. The evaluation method and the analysis of the results are presented in Section 3. Section 4 concludes the research.

An online survey was conducted to understand the service satisfaction and importance from a passenger perspective. The survey is divided into three parts, namely, the introduction, basic passenger information and the passenger service survey of Beijing West Railway Station. The introduction part clarified the purpose of the survey and extended greetings and thanks to the participants. The second part collects the gender, age, occupation, educational level and monthly income of each passenger. The third section is the main part of the survey, which is designed on the basis of SERVQUAL evaluation method. It requires passengers to evaluate the satisfaction and importance of the 20 service indicators of Beijing West Railway Station according to their own personal experience. There are five options for each indicator, representing different levels of feelings, which can be chosen by passengers according to their subjective feelings. The 20 indicators are arranged by the passenger boarding process so that passengers can have an overall perception of the passenger service and provide more logical scores for each service. A total of 203 valid responses are obtained by the survey. Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics of the survey participants.

To better fit the actual situation, some indicators have been appropriately adjusted from the classical SERVQUAL evaluation method. The questionnaire chooses safety, reliability, timeliness, responsiveness and comfort as the main survey attributes, and uses the Likert scale method to process the data. In the satisfaction evaluation, the choices unsatisfied, relatively unsatisfied, average, relatively satisfied and satisfied correspond to scores of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 points, respectively. In the importance evaluation, the choices not important, relatively unimportant, average, relatively important and important correspond to scores of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 points, respectively. The scores of each attribute can be calculated through the results of the survey, the average values of importance and satisfaction are shown in Table 2. Our research chooses the importance score to describe the weight of each indicator and attribute, and they are shown in Table 3.

Considering the problem scenarios and data characteristics, the method adopted in this study mainly derives the direction of service optimization from the difference between passenger expectation and their actual feeling. With the reference to the classical SERVQUAL evaluation method, our method is used to calculate the service quality (SQ) value of each attribute, which is shown in equation (1). The weight difference can be calculated through equation (2). With the decrease of the weight difference, the gap between the actual condition and passenger expectation becomes larger, which means there is greater room for improvement in this aspect of service. The SQ value of each attribute and the weight difference of each indicator can be calculated by the equations. The results of the calculations are shown in Table 4. To more intuitively observe the data characteristic of each indicator and their mutual influence, the data in Table 4 is transformed into the following radar charts shown in Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6, respectively:

where SQ represents the quantitative indicators of overall perceived quality. W_k denotes the weight of each attribute. R is the number of questions in each attribute. $Pi¯$ presents the average value of passenger satisfaction about the i-th indicator. $Ei¯$ presents the average value of passenger expectation about the i-th indicator:

where w_i represents the weight of each indicator in the questionnaire.

From the analysis, the expectation and actual experience of the service of Beijing West Railway Station from the perspective of passengers have been revealed. Passengers of Beijing West Railway Station have relatively high expectation for the passenger service. Although the station has reached a score above the average in all aspects, there still exists a certain distance to the expectations of passengers, which means the station can improve the service accordingly. Among the five attributes of safety, timeliness, reliability, responsiveness and comfort, Beijing West Railway Station has the smallest SQ value in terms of timeliness, which means in this attribute, the gap between passenger expectation and the actual condition is the largest, and it is the part that needs improvement most.

It is shown in Figures 3 and 4 that, in terms of safety, the weight difference of station security check is the smallest. This shows that passengers pay more attention to their personal safety, so the station should also improve management in this aspect to maintain the order of the station and protect the personal safety of passengers. In terms of timeliness, the weight difference of ticketing efficiency is the smallest, indicating that the work organization of ticketing needs to be strengthened. At the same time, it is worth noting that one of the main advantages of railway transportation is its high punctuality. Therefore, passengers have greater expectations for the timeliness of Beijing West Railway Station, and it is necessary to focus on this aspect of service.

It is shown in Figures 4, 5 and 6 that, in terms of reliability, the weight difference of station identification accuracy is significantly smaller than the other two, indicating that there is still much space for improvement in this indicator. Clearly identifying the station information can not only improve passenger loyalty but also alleviate the problems such as passenger flow detours. In terms of responsiveness, the weight difference of emergency processing of train delays is the smallest. It is known as the problem that most affects the travel experience in passenger cognition. And in terms of comfort, the weight difference of the restroom environment is obviously the smallest. So, the station should enhance the cleaning work to build a comfortable environment for the passengers.

This research investigates the expectation and actual experience of the service of Beijing West Railway Station from the perspective of passengers by using a questionnaire survey. The survey is on the basis of SERVQUAL evaluation method, and chose safety, reliability, timeliness, responsiveness and comfort as the main survey attributes to obtain the importance and expectation value of each indicator. Then, the SQ value and weight difference of each aspect can be calculated. Beijing The attribute with the smallest SQ value means the gap between passenger expectation and the actual condition is the largest, and it is the part that needs improvement most. Therefore, the deficiencies of service could be found out, and the station can improve their service accordingly.

It is indicated that among the five studied attributes, Beijing West Railway Station has the smallest SQ value in terms of timeliness, which means this part needs the largest improvement. To the five attributes, each lacks in station security check, ticketing efficiency, station identification accuracy, emergency processing of train delays and the restroom environment, respectively. The disadvantage is that due to the limited number of questionnaire responses and the representativeness of the interviewees, the analysis conclusions may be one-sided.