Evaluation of Inter-City Bus Terminals and Inter-City Bus Service: A Case Study on Kality and Lamberet Bus Terminals

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Date

2016-11

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Addis Ababa University

Abstract

This research aims at evaluating the intercity bus terminals and the intercity bus services by assessing the passengers’ level of satisfaction on two intercity terminals, Kality & Lamberet. The basic evaluation criteria considered were: terminal location and accessibility, terminal information system, service facilities at the terminal (such as passenger waiting place, ticket place), safety and other passenger amenities (such as cafeteria and restrooms). The results showed that the two terminals have significant differences with respect to terminal facility. When the overall level of satisfaction of passengers at Kality terminal is assessed, 12.9 percent were very dissatisfied and 67.7 percent were dissatisfied while the remaining 19.4 percent were moderately satisfied. Concerning the Lamberet terminal, 50 percent were satisfied and 26.7 percent were average while only 23.3 percent were found to be dissatisfied. Focusing on the intercity bus transport services, the main indicators for evaluating the performances and quality of service of a transportation services are availability and adequacy of vehicles, user comfort and safety, travel time savings, service reliability, tariff affordability and passengers’ baggage handling and payment. The findings indicate that passengers are dissatisfied in the service and delivering intercity bus transportation service needs improvement in each of the basic evaluation criteria to increase the level of satisfaction of passengers. The other main focus of the research was related to intercity bus tariff establishment. This was intended to compare the current transportation tariff with a newly developed tariff based on the actual vehicle operating cost of vehicles (VOC). In this regard, it was found that the VOC of the transportation vehicles is higher than their revenue that is collected from the tariff. Based on the research results, the average amount of tariff per person-km for long distance buses on asphalt road is 0.3253 Birr based on the VOC. The current tariff applied for the same vehicle type is 0.3050 Birr per person-km which is about 90 percent of the operating costs. In conclusion, proper consideration of input parameters is required when setting tariff for intercity transportation in relation to the ability of passengers to afford the tariff. It is also important to include different fare structures such as classifying tariff based on affordability of passengers, age of users and time of traveling in respect of peak time travelers’ costs and non-peak period travelers’ costs. This will help in creating equilibrium between the tariff affordability and its sufficiency to make operators profitable so that the industry can be balanced and sustainable in both regards.

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Road and Transport Engineering

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