Identifying priority areas for the improvement of minibus service quality
Final Year Project from CIVL4102
Project supervisor: Dr. C.P. Wong (Department of Civil Engineering)
- kit
- April 25, 2019
- 4:41 pm
Project information
Project descriptions
The minibus is the third most popular form of transportation in Hong Kong, contributing 13% of all trips made in the city. This project aims to identify the priority areas for improvement of minibus services quality which could serve as a reference for related policy making in the future. An on-street questionnaire survey was conducted in December 2018 to collect the up-to-date data, primarily on the public’s ratings on 10 selected service aspects. An ordered logit model was then calibrated for the data to identify the relative importance of these 10 service aspects. After having the relative importance and the satisfaction ratings, an importance-satisfaction analysis was carried out to find out which service aspect has the highest priority for improvement. Result shows that among the 10 service aspects, “in-vehicle comfort” has the highest priority for improvement in both green and red minibuses.
Team information
Project leader: Tai Ho Ting Louis, BEng(CivE)
Project arrangements
Dr. C.P. Wong (Department of Civil Engineering)
‘Identifying priority areas for the improvement of minibus service quality’
Minibus is one of the major public transportation in Hong Kong. According to the Travel Characteristics Survey published by the Transport Department of the Hong Kong Government in 2018, 13% among all trips made in Hong Kong are minibuses trips, ranking minibuses the third popular mode of transport in the city. Despite that minibus is not the most important form of public transportation, it still has its significance as a feeder service which connects local community to the major transportation network which is considered a unique feature of minibus. In light of the significance of minibus, this project aims to identify the priority areas for the improvement of minibus services quality.
Main components of works involved in this project include literature review, data collection, data analysis, oral presentation and technical report writing.
Literature review is essential to form the basis for the project which helps student to understand more about the research subject; Data is then need to be collected since this project is a data-oriented study. The major method for data collection is an on-street questionnaire survey, in which data covers the minibus service satisfaction level; With the data collected, they are then being processed to generate the outcomes; An oral presentation will have to be done for students to present their findings; As for report writing, an interim report and a final report are submitted at the end of semester one and two respectively.
Upon completion of this project, student should be able to identify thus address a real-life problem through conducting research since the project is primarily done by the student oneself.
Not only acquiring the skills involved in an academic research, but also some soft skills that will be useful for students in the future workplace. For instance, working with the team of student research assistants sharpens students’ communication and management skills; while working on a year-long project develops students’ ability to plan, develop and monitor the project progress.
The biggest challenges involved in this project would be the on-street questionnaire survey and the subsequent data analysis. These are new skills to be acquired by most students and takes time to sharpen out. But more importantly, asking strangers on the street to participate in the survey involves great difficulties. The acceptance rate of a stranger to participate is approximately 1 in 20, while most of those who reject are being extremely rude and disrespectful. These inevitably make students reluctant to continue the survey activities, but in order collect sufficient data for data analysis, the challenges has to be overcome.
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