Can rail infrastructure determine perceived quality of service of suburban trains? Insights from Cercanías Madrid

Abstract

Public transport modes in urban peripheries have a twofold function: buses provide the territorial capillarity, while the suburban rail acts as the backbone of mobility. Despite its relevance there, suburban rail usually runs on pre-existing tracks for heavy rail services. Moreover, in the current context of rail liberalization in Europe, the infrastructure manager and the rail operator are separate organizations with impacts on suburban rail. Therefore, it is important to discern the responsibilities of both agents in providing a better service, to promote a more sustainable mobility. This work aims to explore how the perceived quality of service (QoS) of suburban rail services can be influenced by the rail network infrastructure. The suburban rail network of Madrid (Cercanías) has been selected as case study because of the combination of pre-existing and new tracks as well as having a total of 9 regular lines, enough to perform this analysis. Data is gathered from the 2019 annual Cercanías traveler satisfaction survey. First, different aspects of the lines are thoroughly examined, such as the travel time between stops, shared sections or the location of the different sections within the metropolitan area. These factors are transformed into indicators to ease comparison. Based on the main indicators and the average QoS, lines are classified into 4 groups. The joint analysis of the infrastructure indicators and the attributes from the traveler satisfaction survey suggests that lines with similar QoS also have features common regarding to infrastructure and operation such as line length or travel time between stations.