Besides public transport such as rail, metro, tram and bus networks, collective passenger transport also covers car-sharing, car-pooling and flexible mobility services such as train-taxi schemes and demand-responsive transport in areas of low demand.
Improvements to public transport services may address public transport vehicles and related infrastructure, as well as management techniques.
The project AENEAS - Attaining Energy-Efficient Mobility in an Ageing Society has produced a driver training manual which seeks to give drivers an understanding of their senior passengers and how best to deal with this client group. The manual with presentation was produced as a result of a training project carried out in Salzburg (Austria). A short film about it can also be watched here.
Shifting a greater number of passengers to railway travel would be a highly effective way of reducing the environmental impact of transport. This holds true for journeys at all distances, including local, intercity, interregional and international travel. However, a major challenge is making railway stations welcoming places where people can spend their time comfortably.
Understanding the impact of the price of transportation, whether on a single mode or multiple modes of transportation, is a crucial part of transport planning.
The ICMA Amobilife Price and Cost Modelling Tool enables transport providers to model and evaluate different pricing options for new multi-modal connections. The tool enables evaluation of the feasibility of improving and extending mobility solutions. It supports providers in optimising connections in terms of their layout, schedule, cost efficiency and fare revenues.
Various forms of competition in the delivery of public transport services have been developed in the last 20 years. This competition has been 'on-road', with multiple operators on the same route, and 'off-road', through tendering for exclusive contracts on a route or network basis.
There is potential for greater efficiency and reducing environmental impact of passenger transport by improving the connections between different modes or networks of transport. The INTERCONNECT project focused on journeys of at least 100km which involves at least one short-distance stage, and has developed guidance for improving the connection of short-distance modes to long-distance ones, such as interregional railways, seaports or airports.
The NICHES+ project developed twelve practitioner manuals innovative measures for making urban transport more efficient and sustainable. The manuals aim to make these measures mainstream urban transport approaches in Europe.
The measures are included under four broad themes - transport accessibility, planning and use of interchanges, traffic management, and automated and space-efficient vehicles. The manuals explain how to implement such schemes, the costs that will be incurred, the benefits of the measures and which stakeholders to involve.
A modern and high-quality public transport is the backbone of urban transport. Against the door-to-door trip by private car, a more sustainable model of public transport should offer passengers the possibility of a seamless journey taking advantage of the flexible combination of features of the different transport modes and the covering supply of interconnected long-distance, regional and local networks of public transport.
The topic 'Regulatory framework of public transport' contains legal as well as organisational aspects. In recent years the frameworks have undergone significant changes due to the shift in political priorities proposed by EU legislation leading to a more deregulated public transport market enabling some form of controlled competition. Public transport is aiming to achieve economic efficiency, quality of service and transparency in operation and as well as in organisation. Those goals can only be fulfilled if the relationship between authorities and operators is creative and mature.
Quality and benchmarking in public transport are both management methods. Although they are common in the industrial field and used for a long time, they are not much known in the public transport field yet.
Both terms need to be clearly defined, because their present use is generally not appropriate: quality is a very well known word, but everyone puts their own interpretation on it. Benchmarking is often reduced merely to mean some sort of comparison.
