Quality Management of the Public Passenger Transport in Ljubljana

The standard EN 13816 was issued in April 2002 and adopted in Slovenia in May 2003 as SIST EN 13816:2003 with the subtitle Transport – Logistics and Services – Public Passenger Transport – Assessment of Quality, Goals and Performance. This standard provides definitions and quality elements as well as goals and methods of measuring quality in public passenger transport. It does not provide, however, criteria for weighing individual elements, limit and admissible deviation values and similar. The standard is therefore not applicable in the preparation of calls for tenders, conclusion of contracts, performance rating and penalizing of services offered, etc. This research was therefore aimed at applying the standard in urban traffic in Ljubljana and not so much at measuring the performance quality of a public passenger transport supplier. The established system for quality management according to the standard is intended to include all partners, especially competent authorities, operators and other entities. The below steps should be considered:

• Identification of explicit and implicit expectations of users
• Consideration of legal, political, financial and technical limitations
• Identification of present quality and fields where services could be improved
• Establishment of measurable goals and quality criteria
• Quality measurement  
• Corrective activities
• Assessment of users’ satisfaction  
• Preparation of the activity program to reduce discrepancies between already implemented measures and expectations The research includes a system chart (steps or activities, competent actors) with recurrent loops. Quality criteria were selected because it is not reasonable and financially acceptable to measure all quality criteria from the standard (106 all together) in the municipality of Ljubljana. Indicators and measuring methods were determined for each criterion. Tools for measuring quality elements and questionnaires for establishing users’ satisfaction were prepared. The tools were tested in practice on a test sample. This report shows the results of testing measuring tools and the results of questionnaires. The field findings serve as a basis for the preparation of the measurement plan.