Identifying priority areas for public transport service improvement: experiences from Gothenburg city

This study investigates priority areas for improving public transport (PT) services in Gothenburg city by analyzing users’ perceptions of 20 key service attributes. A web-based survey collected 674 responses, assessing users’ importance and satisfaction ratings on a five-point Likert-type scale. RIDIT analysis was employed to determine user-perceived rankings of importance and satisfaction, followed by Importance-Satisfaction Analysis (ISA) to categorize the attributes into four priority quadrants based on combined importance and satisfaction scores. The results of the RIDIT ranking and ISA were then compared to identify critical areas for intervention to improve PT service quality. Ordered Probit models further examined how user characteristics such as age, gender, income, education, car ownership, and trip frequency influence satisfaction with the priority attributes. Key findings indicate that fare, punctuality, and number of transfers are considered highly important but receive low user satisfaction. Additionally, user characteristics were found to significantly influence satisfaction with the priority attributes.