The quality of railway carriage environments

A questionnaire was developed for use with a large sample of passengers travelling in British Rail stock on a cross-section of main line routes serviced by London Midland Region. The questionnaire was distributed to a stratified random sample of 1500 passengers-covering both male and female travellers in five different carriage types. The aim of the study was to determine the improvements passengers would most like to see in existing carriage design, and generally what they felt about the quality of their environment. The questionnaire included sections covering personal and travel details, a check list of conceivable improvements, and the use of the semantic differential technique for obtaining passengers' impressions and perceptions. The findings allowed comparisons to be made between the different carriage interiors and resulted in recommendations for the possible modification of certain carriage designs.