PROCEED - Principles of Successful High Quality Public Transport Operation and Development
Overview
Background & policy context:
A sustainable and equitable society requires a reliable and attractive public transport system. Nonetheless, all over Europe many cities are facing similar problems:
- the city centres are less attractive than external shopping centres;
- the urban population suffer from ever-increasing car traffic and resulting environmental problems;
- public transport (especially in small and medium-sized cities) is affected by steadily decreasing numbers of passengers.
Developments in the transport sector in the past years have been such that it is uncertain if today's public transport system can live up to the requirements of sustainability and equity. Nevertheless, there are examples of positive results that have been reached through customer-oriented transport and marketing measures.
The PROCEED project addresses the research domain 'High quality Public Transport' of the objective 1 'New technologies and concepts for all surface transport modes (road, rail and waterborne' of the Work Programme of the thematic Priority 1.6.2 'Sustainable Surface Transport'.
The project will give a better understanding of the key factors that influence public transport, as well as how the position of public transport in the transport system can be strengthened so that its market share can increase.
Objectives:
The project objective will conduct research on public transport operations in small and medium-sized cities in order to understand how to improve its efficiency, effectiveness and attractiveness to the users.
The main aim of the project is to design a planning tool that can be used to develop successful public transport, mainly by bus, in small and medium-sized European cities with a population between 25 000 and 250 000 inhabitants.
PROCEED will tackle the challenges and lead to an improved expertise and an extended knowledge-base, that on the one hand will help to develop, implement and assess European policy, and on the other will help to plan, develop and implement effective and efficient public transport (bus) systems, contributing to the European framework conditions supporting modal shift away from individual motorised traffic towards sustainable transport modes.
Methodology:
The work within PROCEED is divided into three parts:
- Analysis. In this phase, data on success factors and pitfalls from public transport operators all around Europe will be collected. The analysis will be carried out from the market (user needs, factors to influence people's choice, common European trends, marketing effects, etc.) and product sides (PT system infrastructure, financial issues, trends and mobility needs, strategies for customer relation management, etc.). The project will analyse three cities in each EU member state.
- Synthesis. Based on the data collected in the previous phase and on the findings of other related research projects, and considering future trends and changes in European society and legislation, the project will produce a vision of the long term future of bus services in small and medium sized cities. This will lead to a better understanding of the costs and benefits of improving the image, improving reliability and speed and improving comfort. Thus, the project will develop guidelines covering the following issues:
- methods for analysing the market side of High Quality Public Transport (HQPT)
- development & upgrade network and infrastructure of HQPT
- financing of HQPT
- managing of HQPT
- marketing strategies for HQPT.
- Verification. During this phase adequacy and usefulness of the guidelines will be controlled and verified with stakeholders in different parts of Europe. A total of eight public transport operators have sub-contracted and they will form a strategic reference group to evaluate the practical usefulness and comprehensiveness of the guidelines.
All findings of these three phases will be synthesised to produce 'Public Transport Guidelines for Europe' which will include detailed data and trends as well as methodologies to investigate local needs and expectations, as well as the best practices identified all over Europe.
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