Transport needs of people have been rapidly increasing over the past years due to rapid urbanization coupled with an increase in population. People tend to use private vehicles rather than public transport services due to expectations of efficiency, effectiveness, quality and convenience in fulfilling their day to day needs. This results in increased private motorization with a huge traffic congestion which results in longer travel times to reach the expected destinations and many other traffic related issues in urban cities. For instance, private motorization affects the safety of vulnerable road users [1], results in high consumption of non-renewable resources [2] and causes a serious threat to the quality of human environments [3] & [4]. As a contemporary solution to existing traffic related issues, encouraging modes of public transport by enhancing service quality attributes is an indispensable policy decision. By identifying the key dimensions that offer value and influence passenger satisfaction, alternative bus strategies can be devised so that more people opt in favour of this service [5]. In many countries different value added services have been introduced to bus transportation with price discrimination so that passengers can choose any service based on affordability. In the Sri Lankan bus transport sector three basic types of services are available: Super-Luxury, Luxury and Semi-Luxury services. However, passenger responses on their satisfaction with these types of services during the years under consideration appear to have been unfavourable. Statistics reveal that roughly 1,600 public complaints are received annually against the Semi-luxury bus service: the highest incidence of complaints compared to the other types of luxury services [6]. Among Semi-luxury bus routes, the Panadura–Kandy (17) Semi-luxury bus service received a significant number of public complaints. There is scant literature on passenger satisfaction with the Semi-luxury type bus service. Thus, the focus of this paper is to investigate the service quality attributes that influence passenger satisfaction with the Semi-luxury bus service on the Panadura-Kandy (17) route using descriptive and econometric analyses.

Danthanarayana, C.T. (2018). Assessment of passenger satisfaction with semi-luxury bus service: Panadura-Kandy (17) route [Extended Abstract].In T.L. Gunaruwan (Ed.), Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Research for Transport and Logistics Industry 2018 (pp. 53-57). Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics.