Evaluating the Service Quality of the First Bus Rapid Transit Corridor in Hanoi City and Policy Implications

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a concept born in the 1970s and developed successfully in many developing countries because of its advantages (e.g., lower required investment, more flexibility, faster establishment, and much larger capacity) over traditional bus services. However, the first BRT system in Hanoi (Vietnam), which runs between the Kim Ma terminal and the Yen Nghia terminal, is flawed evidence with a daily ridership at approximately 13,500 passengers. This patronage is only comparable with that of the conventional bus route. This study aimed to find underlying factors determining the service quality to propose policy implications for improving the Hanoi BRT. The data used were the responses of 243 BRT passengers gathered in a customer satisfaction survey conducted in March 2017. The method was an adapted version of the well-known SERVQUAL model with the use of Exploratory Factor Analysis. As regards the findings, the four factors found were Quickness and Timeliness (beta = 0.278), Safety and Reliability (beta = 0.249), Access (beta = 0.217), and Comfort (beta = 0.188). They explained 62.5% of the variance of passengers' satisfaction. Among the eight policy solutions proposed to enhance the four factors mentioned above, the three most important and feasible ones were the implementations of the prioritized traffic signal for BRT, busway enforcement, and automatic pre-board ticket collection.