Understanding perception of commuters for safety and risk mitigation mechanism: the case of public transportation

Public transportation specifically mass rapid transit service like metro rail is vulnerable to the risk due to high customer traffic, visibility, accessibility and increasing security threat. Commuters are highly sensitive and concerned about their safety while travelling through public transport facility and safety and security measure of public transportation is one of the most significant drivers of customer satisfaction. In the present study, perception data was collected from all the 160 metro stations of Delhi Metro and both qualitative and quantitative research technique was employed to analyse the result. The result of the study depicts that presence and alertness of security personnel has most significant impact over commuter satisfaction followed by effectiveness of metal detector and safety provisions against accident and terrorist attack. This study opines that security services need to be reviewed in the light of changing security dynamics to counter any critical incident and unforeseen situation.