Passengers’ Perception towards Private and Public Bus Service

Passenger Road Transportation plays a pivotal role in India in bringing about greater mobility both within and between rural and urban areas. Through increased mobility it also contributes immensely to social and economic development of different regions of the country. In India, as in many other parts of the world, investment in road transport is treated as a part of public provision of services whereby one of the key objectives of this provision has been to meet the social obligations of an affordable, safe and reliable bus service to the people. The road transport mode in India has come to occupy a pivotal position in the overall transport system in India. Over the past four decades, the share of road transport in overall traffic flows has been continually increasing with a substantial shift from rail to road being observed. This mode is currently estimated to have a share of about 80% in passenger transport and 60% in freight transport. Despite such an impressive growth, it is increasingly being recognized that there is a wide gap between the demand for, and the supply of, road transport services, both from a qualitative as well as quantitative perspective. While the problem has been mainly due to the inefficient public sector management of its transport assets (especially in passenger transport services where it dominates), which has also stemmed from restrictive policy and implementation measures over a period of time.  The objective of the present study is to compare the consumer perception on service quality of public and private transport services in Tirunelveli district. The main aim of the study is to identify the perception of passengers towards reliability, convenience, cost and comfort of public and private transport. It is found that the majority of the passengers of public and private transports are moderately satisfied with the overall service quality of the public and private transports.