To conclude, of the nine railway stations only three stations will be included the RP questionnaire, each focussing on a different comfort enhancement measure. For green and planters, Almelo station is surveyed. Eindhoven CS is surveyed for determine the effects of RailTV. Lastly, Helmond station will be surveyed for the effects of lighting. The recruitment of each station is either based on noticeable (positive and negative) changes in relevant customer needs and/or the importance of the railway station in the development agenda of the province of North-Brabant.
The revealed preference questionnaire is designed as an online survey. Using the open source survey tool LimeSurvey (LimeSurvey Project Team & Schmitz, 2015) the online questionnaire was created. LimeSurvey included an responsive web design, making the survey accessible for mobile devices as well as desktop computers. By using routing, one survey is used for the all three railway stations. A complete printout of the revealed preference questionnaire (in Dutch) can be found in Appendix C. When the respondent has entered the URL, (s)he is welcomed and receives a short introduction about the intentions of the survey. The next page askes the respondent at which railway station they’re asked to participate in the survey. Secondly, the respondent is asked to report the date at which they received the invitation. This information (station and date) will be used in to specify the questions and statements to come. First, the respondent is ask to state their current experience. Therefore, the respondents has to state their own trip characteristic: trip frequency, trip purpose, access mode, ticket type, car availability, and car as alternative mode of transport. Secondly, the respondent receives the exact same statements as used in the Stationsbelevingsmonitor. Using the exact same statements ensures the comparison between SBM and RP databases.
After reporting their current station experience, the respondent continues to define their changed experience based on one comfort enhancement measures. Because every traveller might notices a different measure, the respondent is asked which measure (s)he has noticed. Five options of comfort
5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 (H) UITN (H) SFEE (H) VEIL (H) SCHO (Z) UITN (Z) SFEE (Z) VEIL (Z) SCHO (A) UITN (A) SFEE (A) VEIL (A) SCHO
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enhancement measures and a ‘other’ option are provided. The option list is static, and does not change based on the station reported by the respondent. It might be the case that some measures are not present at some railway stations, but are chosen. Once the explicitly noticed measure has been selected, the respondent is asked to report their experienced change in overall station assessment,
ridership, and the five customer needs based on the selected comfort enhancement measure. The
experienced change is reported on a 5-level Likert item, ranging from largely worsened to largely
improved.
Once the effects of the explicit measure have been reported, the respondent is asked to rank eight (NS) themes in order of their personal importance. The order by which the themes are presented is random, to avoid a bias in initial assessment. The ranking will be used to point out the fields of improvement for future improvements (e.g. by comfort enhancement measures).
The previous questions could be answered by every respondent, independent of the first time the respondent has used the railway station. The following questions in this section of the survey can only be answered if the respondent has been using the railway station since 2013 or earlier. This is because the following questions and statements focus on one of the three comfort enhancement measures. First, the respondent is asked to report in which year (s)he first used the surveyed railway station. If this they stated 2014, 2015 or 2016 they are taken to the next section of questions. If respondents reported the year 2013 or any year before 2013, the respondent receives four or more follow-up questions. Secondly, the respondent is asked to state their average travel frequency, most common trip purpose and access mode in 2013. If the travel frequency and/or trip purpose has changed between 2016 and 2013 seven statements are presented to find you why the trip frequency of purpose has changed. Each statement could be answered on a 5-level Liker item (completely disagree to
completely agree, and a not applicable option).
Once the respondent has mentioned their average trip characteristics of 2013, they continue to the implicit comfort enhancement measure. Based on the station selected in the first section of the survey, the correct measure is presented to the respondent (green and planters for Almelo, RailTV for Eindhoven, and lightning for Helmond). If the respondent has noticed the implicit measure as explicit measure, this question is skipped. As for the explicit measure, the same seven statements are used to define the change experienced by the respondent (overall station assessment, ridership, five customer needs). Respondents at Helmond station are asked to answer one more array of statements relating to the reconstruction of the station environment. These statements are used to underpin the statement made by the province of North-Brabant concerning the effects of the reconstruction. Once the changed experience related to explicit and implicitly noticed comfort enhancement measures has been reported the respondent continues to the final section: personal characteristics. In this section five personal characteristics are asked: (1) age, (2) gender, (3) assessment of the weather, (4) level of education, and (5) employment status. To avoid early drop-outs of respondents (e.g. if they don’t want to provide personal information), this section is located at the end of the survey. Once completed, the respondent is redirected to the thank you page.
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To have a representative sample size, the number of respondents of each comfort enhancement measure should be between 150 and 300 respondents. This large variation is narrowed down based on the number of respondents for each survey in the SBM database. In Table 3-3 the expected number of respondents for each railway station are presented. These numbers originate from the SBM database. For Helmond and Almelo station, the maximum number of respondents of the available SBM data are used. In the case of Eindhoven CS, the average number of respondents has been selected.
TABLE 3-3,EXPECTED AND REALISED NUMBER OF RESPONDENTS FOR EACH RAILWAY STATION.