An assessment of the effects and cost-effectiveness of a public transport journey planner
Overview
Background & policy context:
The Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council launched a door-to-door Internet journey planner in November 2001. The new system provides door-to-door itinerary planning, timetable and route information for the whole public transport system in the area. The idea was to make a rather complex transport system more easily accessible; to combine information from various sources to provide an optimum itinerary, designed purely on individual needs and preferences.
The usage has been constantly rising since the beginning of the service. The number of accessed main pages is on average 12 000 and total number of accessed pages 100 000 each weekday. Novo Meridian Ltd is the system developer and maintainer.
Objectives:
The objectives of this project are to:
- Analyse the use of the service, define user groups;
- Collect and analyse user opinions and development needs;
- Evaluate technology and usability;
- Evaluate publicity of the service;
- Estimate effects on public transport usage and information acquisition;
- Develop methodology to estimate socio-economical profitability of an internet journey planner; and
- Guide future development.
Methodology:
In order to estimate socio-economical profitability, a calculation model, based on users' own experience on different effects and their magnitude, was developed. The model uses statistics and various study results as an input and calculates cost-benefit ratio as a result.
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