Public Transport Information Systems: An English Case Study

Abstract

One of the key problems for passengers using urban bus services is its unreliability, mainly caused by congestion in the system. Real time information allows passengers to make decisions based on the actual arrival time of the bus, rather than the expected time. If levels of satisfaction with the bus service are raised, then the improvement in the quality of that service will result in a greater demand from existing bus users. It may even result in car users and others switching to the bus service. Recently in Europe some interesting case studies have been carried out which aim to assess behavioral responses of end-users to transport telematics applications (Argyrakos et al. 1994).

The material for this chapter has come from the EU DRIVE II project and we are grateful to all partners in the consortium for their contributions — TRENDS (Athens), FUA (Amsterdam), TTR (Oxford), and UCL (London). We are also grateful to the ROMANSE (Southampton) and QUARTET (Birmingham) projects for their help in collecting the data, and for support from Hampshire County Council and from CENTRO (Birmingham).