Substantiation of the Methodology for Assessing the Attractiveness of Urban Bus Routes

Abstract

The relevance of studying the problem of assessing the attractiveness of urban bus routes is due to the fact that in modern market conditions, the main condition for ensuring the survival of passenger transport enterprises, obtaining the desired profit, achieving economic stability and high competitiveness is to provide passengers with the most attractive bus routes than competitors.

The analysis of existing approaches to assessing the attractiveness of urban bus routes has shown that there are no direct methods for assessing their attractiveness. When assessing the attractiveness of products, services, and the investment attractiveness of enterprises and organizations, rating assessment methods, such as the point method and the comparative rating assessment method, are most widely used. The common disadvantage of these methods is the difficulty of determining the attractiveness factors of a product, service, or enterprise, as well as the difficulty of their use in assessing the attractiveness of city bus routes due to the lack of consideration of the characteristics of the factors and indicators of these routes.

Based on the analysis of existing approaches to assessing the attractiveness of city bus routes, determining their advantages and disadvantages, and the conclusions drawn, a methodology for assessing the attractiveness of these routes has been developed, which, unlike existing ones, is based on the use of an integral indicator to assess the level of satisfaction of individual passenger indicators of route attractiveness. In addition, the developed methodology involves the use of E. Harrington’s «desirability function» to establish the qualitative level of attractiveness of city bus routes.

The use of the proposed methodology for assessing the attractiveness of urban bus routes will allow passenger transport companies to make a correct assessment of their routes and carry out their improvement in accordance with the requirements of passengers. This will allow enterprises to increase their level of competitiveness, increase the volume of passenger transportation, as well as get the desired profit and improve economic results. We propose to use the consumer properties of the route, the quality of passenger transportation and the fare for passenger transportation as the main factors of the attractiveness of urban bus routes. The proposed methodology for assessing the attractiveness of urban bus routes can be used to assess the attractiveness of routes of other bus routes, as well as routes of other types of passenger transport, taking into account the specifics of their consumer and quality factors.