Rural areas form a large part of Syria's coastal area. Linking between these areas and city
centers transact of a network of roads. Each of these roads and transport means form the
rural transport system which characterized by general characteristi
cs of low levels of
traffic, economic activity and population density, and long distances between centers such
as service centers. The presenting of services, operations and maintenance characterize at
high costs, and there are often difficult geographical and natural conditions.
Vehicle operating costs refer to costs that vary with vehicle usage, including fuel, tires,
maintenance, repairs…etc., which dependent on the mileage.
Transportation agencies and maintenance workshops were visited during this study. As
well as, interviews have been done with a random sample of public transport drivers
working on some rural axes in the coastal area, in order to obtain the required information
about the vehicle operating and maintenance costs.
The study concluded by identifying the most important factors that may effect on the tariff
of passenger transport on rural axes (maintenance of the vehicle, fuel costs, quality of the
road .....) and proposing a number of recommendations aimed at improving the public
transport system and raising its efficiency in rural areas.
Most of the villages and rural towns, in general, and in Latakia, in particular, suffer from
poor transport organizing and Serving of people so that travelling has become a great
suffering for most people. After studying the transport situation bet
ween Jableh and
Latakia, we found that this city suffers from transport problems like other cities. This is
because of transport poor management and regulation including timing, the number of
vehicles available and inability to meet demand, which causes a deterioration in service
quality.
The research provided a comprehensive method to evaluate the performance of public
transport on the road by evaluating travel time, the journey speed, and the buses volume
and frequency. Considering these indicators as a criterion for evaluating the performance
of public transport to determine the most effective factors regarding the quality of
performance of public transport and improve this performance in future. A field and
practical study of the research has been conducted, which includes selecting of study sites,
collecting engineering and traffic data, designing of questionnaires and distributing them
on random passengers and drivers working on Jableh - Lattakia transportation road to find
out their opinions. Then the data has been inserted into SPSS Statistics Base program for
analyzing the results.
The research has concluded that the performance of public transport between Jableh and
Latakia is generally weak, and the largest proportion of passengers depend on their
mobility on minibuses, which does not satisfy the required transportation level. Therefore,
a range of solutions has been developed depending on local conditions which will ease the
burden of mobility and raise the transportation performance level.
