The Possible Uses of the Global Level of Service (GLS) as a Tool for the Performances Measurement of the road Networks

In Italy in the first nineties started a process of transformation of the Public Administration (PA) aimed to improve the citizen satisfaction about the utilities offered by PA itself. In this process, the topic of the public utilities quality and the central role of citizen, either as service user and as strategic resource to evaluate the correspondence of given services to real needs is particularly important. In spite of this need is today largely recognized, and in spite of the many initiatives undertaken by administrations, some uncertainties about the right solutions still remain. One of the most used tool is the measurement of the user satisfaction level, or, in other words, the measurement of the level of quality perceived by the users (citizen), the so called “customer satisfaction”. As this regard, the aim of the 2003 Italian Ministerial Directive about the “Quality perceived by citizen” is the promotion and the development of systematic methods to survey quality of services. These methods have to be implemented by administration in order to define new ways of service supplying and/or interventions to improve the existing services. The road performance measurement tool being presented in this paper, called GLS (Global Level of Service), perfectly fits this context. It is a method set up by a group of researchers of the Polytechnic University of Bari and its aim is to provide the interurban roads with synthetic quality indexes. The calculation of these indexes starts from the parameters representing the characteristics of the road system service offered by the infrastructure. More than 50 indicators have been identified and they have been gathered together in 6 groups concerning safety, comfort, travel time, services, environment and traffic conditions. For each of them it is possible to associate a single numeric parameter to evaluate the quality of service of the road section. The method is a further development of “customer satisfaction” because enable to evaluate, not only users satisfaction level, but also the level of satisfaction of the infrastructure owner/manager and of the infrastructures crossed countries inhabitants; in fact every index can be evaluated differently for the 3 points of view above mentioned. The aim of the research was, therefore, to define an algorithm that, starting from specific surveying on the road section, gives the quality of the service offered by the road, i.e. the Global Level of Service - (GLS). Rational and conventional definition process of road service quality, once pointed out, has huge application potentialities as it can be used as a basis for technique, economic and strategic choices linked to the road facilities. In this work last version of GLS methodology are presented. The last version of GLS software enable a rapid surveyed data implementation. The work also presents an application of the GLS methodology to a road network in the Bari area (south - Italy).