All published articles of this journal are available on ScienceDirect.
The Need of E-ticket to Support the Public Bus Service Improvement Policy in a Developing Country
Abstract
Background:
Public buses are a major transportation mode in large cities in the developing country Indonesia. Nevertheless, most societies still use passenger cars. Therefore, the road authority has developed an important policy to improve public bus services soon. One of the public bus services is to change the bus operational system, including the manual ticketing system to an electronic ticket (e-ticket) system. In order to make the policy succeed, the road authority should ask for passengers’ opinions.
Objective:
The purposes of this study are to ensure that the bus e-ticket is needed to support the policy and then to determine important priority factors of bus e-ticket implementation.
Methods:
The data were collected using a direct survey with a questionnaire in large cities, Surabaya and Denpasar in Indonesia. A total of 565 bus passengers participated in this survey. An analysis was conducted through cross tabulation between the respondents’ demographic data and their perceived level of need and priority of implementation with regard to various factors of the e-ticket system. The Simple Additive Weighting method was used to determine the important priority factors.
Results:
Results indicated that a bus e-ticket needed for the cross tabulation average value is more than 3.60 out of 5.00 for all factors. Furthermore, the three highest values of factors based on the Simple Additive Weighting method are ease of access, availability of the bus routes information, and affordability of the e-ticket price.
Conclusion:
Since respondents indicate that the e-ticket is needed and is a priority, then the policy is beneficial not only to improve bus services in Indonesia but also in other developing countries with similar traffic and geometric conditions.
