Since railway stations are usually located relatively far from each other, even within the major cities, getting to them or from them is usually animportant part of a rail journey, and therefore must also be accounted for in the efforts to increase rail use. Thus, the accessibility of a station can be a factor in determining if the railway is chosen as a travel alternative. As part of a research on the Integration Between Rail and Access-to-railway-station Modes (IBRAM), this paper focuses on understanding which modes passengers use to get to or from railway stations in the Netherlands and the main characteristics of these passengers. The analysis also looks on whether railway passengers could have used a car for the journey instead of travelling by rail and how this influenced their choice of access mode to the station. Following this, the importance of the passengers satisfaction with the access facilities (e.g. car parks at the station) in determining their overall satisfaction from using the train is estimated. Theanalysis is based on Dutch Railways (NS) customer satisfaction survey carried out between a Monday and Friday in September 2005. The results show that most passengers access the home end station by walking, public transport and bicycle and egress the activity end station mainly by walking or using public transport. The car was used to access the home end station by only 7.2% of passengers. Amongst the passengers who had a car available forthe journey (43% of passengers) only 16% used it to get to the station, suggesting that in the Netherlands almost half of train passengers are not a captive market, they could have used the car; and that even when a car is available other alternatives are preferred. A regression analysis showedthat the overall quality judgment of railway travellers for the trips they make is most strongly affected by the price/quality perception of the trip, but the summed weight of the other components, the quality perception of the station and the access facilities, is of a similar magnitude. An implication is that railway companies should not only consider their core business the running of trains - but also the additional factors such as thestation quality and the quality of the access modes in order to increase customer satisfaction. The results show that the rail-access environment in the Netherlands (dense railway network, good urban public transport and widespread use of bicycle) is materializing into an access to station profile that is dominated by walking, bicycle and public transport modes that can contribute to reduction in environmental pollution around railway stations. The analysis shows that lowering the average distance to the station, by opening more stations on the network, will lead to a change in the modal share on access to the home station as passengers would trade public transport for bicycle and walking. However, a policy to open new stations on the Dutch railway network is unlikely to have a substantial effect on using the car to access the station and it will result in travel time penalties since trains will be required to make more stops. For the covering abstract see ITRD E137145.
Abstract