I can certainly agree with that very heavily paraphrased conclusion from
Nor Diana Mohd Mahudin. I had to peek a bit further when I saw this thesis title:
"Quality of rail passenger experience: the direct and spillover effects of crowding on individual well-being and organisational behaviour."
This researcher looked at the perceptions of over-crowding among key stakeholder institutions in the Malaysian rail industry and found it to be considered a minor problem compared to "capacity, infrastructure, and serive quality issues." But what the author has done has developed an effective measure to determine passengers' experience of overcrowding; this shows that they find it stressful and that this stress has an impact on their life beyond the journey itself. Indeed when you have a look at the author's blog,
Beyond Commuting, there are links to wider research that suggest people with a long commute are more likely to divorce!
This research caught my eye because I commuted for a year to study for my MA in Librarianship and the rail journey was utterly soul-destroying and exhausting:
- only getting a seat half the time meant I couldn't guarantee I could get any work done on the journey
- hanging around waiting for delayed trains, worrying about getting to lectures on time
- overcrowded trains just make everyone grumpy, rude and generally vile
My conclusion: I hope I never have to commute by train ever again. Good research here, of great value.
