Customers' Perspective on the Facilities Provided By Southern Expressway Services, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Southern Expressway is the first link of the Expressway network planned for Sri Lanka. “What is the customers’ perspective on the current facilities provided by the Southern Expressway Services” is the research problem addressed by the study and based on that, evaluating the customers’ perspective on the facilities provided by the Southern Expressway Services has been the objective of the study. Primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire, collected online and manually, targeting three hundred and fifty (350) passengers, travelled by both private and public modes of transportation based on the stratified random sampling technique and 78% valid responses received with 0.880 Cranach’s Alpha value in Reliability Statistics of data. As per the descriptive analysis, attending to work stations and official travels are the main purposes of travelling among 41% of respondents and 54% are using their private vehicles. Moreover ninety three precent (93%) of the respondents considers expressways are as a modern need in the society. As per the Factor Analysis and the Principal Components Analysis, twelve components have been derived namely as Vantage factors, Road Directives, Value Added Service Factor, Penalty and Number of Toll Entrance and etc. Furthermore availability of a mini hospital in the Canowin arcade and a recreation centre are the main facilities recommended to be added and improved in Southern Expressway Services in the study and expanding the study for other express ways in Sri Lanka is a major recommendation for future researches.