A rail network performance metric to capture passenger experience

For passenger rail operators worldwide a common concern is to better understand and improve passenger experience. Based on factors including train movement times and crowding, the Journey Time Metric and Disutility Metric can be used to quantitatively assess the journey experience of individual passengers. However an assessment of overall network performance is also desirable. This paper presents a whole-network assessment metric that captures passenger experience by aggregating and normalizing individual journey assessments. The newly developed metric is validated against customer satisfaction data measured in passenger surveys of the London Underground Limited Victoria Line with a statistically significant correlation (P < 0.005) between the predictions and the measurements. It is found that there is a high degree of correlation (ρ = 1.00, P < 0.005) between the network scores calculated using the new whole-network assessment metric with either the Journey Time Metric or Disutility Metric despite their different formulations and countries of origin. Through development of the new metric it is identified that many commonly used network assessment metrics (e.g. Public Performance Measure and the end-to-end journey time of passengers) are insensitive to crucial aspects of passenger experience. The newly developed metric could be used by rail operators to better select strategies for improving passenger experience.