Evaluating the impact of socio-economic factors on public transport satisfaction: A research on railway systems

Public transport should be satisfactory for urban mobility, mainly through railway systems, which form an important part of transportation infrastructure. Socioeconomic factors like education, employment status, and income significantly impact people's satisfaction levels with public transport. Such impacts need to be understood so that transportation systems can become more efficient and user-friendly. The impacts on how socioeconomic characteristics affect public transportation satisfaction, especially with railway systems are explored. Finding the key elements that affect passenger satisfaction and experience is the goal of this research. A mixed-technique approach is utilized for selecting 150 participants. Participants are surveyed based on their socioeconomic status and satisfaction with several parts of the railway systems. The data are analyzed statistically, including regression analysis and descriptive analysis, to assess a connection between socioeconomic characteristics and satisfaction levels with services. According to the regression analysis's findings, elements like cabin condition (Std Beta = 0.88), restrooms (Std Beta = 0.85), and train security services (Std Beta = 0.83) all have a major impact on the overall quality of services provided to passengers. While descriptive statistics also revealed high satisfaction with services, including medical facilities and on-train security (means = 4.2 and 4.7), evaluations for services, public addressing systems (mean = 3.5), and alarm chains (mean = 3.2) were quite variable. The results show that there is a considerable correlation between satisfaction and socioeconomic characteristics; people with higher incomes and better educational backgrounds report higher levels of satisfaction. Greater levels of satisfaction are highly correlated with socioeconomic criteria, particularly income and education, necessitating tailored adjustments to meet the varied requirements of passengers across different demographic groups. The research illustrates how important it is to consider socioeconomic factors while establishing and enhancing railway infrastructure.