The art of developing sustainable and attractive public transport based on user needs

With hopes to develop new innovations and increase the number of travelers the structures in Swedish local and regional public transport have changed in recent years. Sara Davoudi, have studied the public transport authorities’ capacity to develop public transport in a way that will stimulate the intentions of the new Public Transport Act that came into effect in 2012. Sara looks at the problems and opportunities that exist in the different structures and how they may be relevant to the users.

Public transport is one of the few public services with the mission to attract users. To attract users the involved actors, the Swedish public transport authorities need to understand how the various services in different dimensions affect users’ preferences regarding public transportation. What are the users’ needs, how to meet them, and how can we get more people to choose public transport instead of the car? Only then the public authorities can effectively allocate their resources and make the future of public transport more attractive and sustainable.

Such an approach requires not only a deep organizational knowledge about the needs of users, but also a detailed knowledge of how the achievement of different requirements affect the users.

– My licentiate thesis show that the organizational structure within the Swedish public transport are based on political compromises rather than the need to resolve the coordination challenges and meeting the needs of the users. Organizational structures combined with personal and impersonal information mechanisms affect the search for information and also in organizational learning. This affects the regional public transport authorities  ability to include and understand the public transport users’ needs. This thesis gives an insight in how public organizations, such as Swedish public transport authorities can make decisions on structural design so that they can include and learn from users’ perceptions and needs, and then adapt the organizations policy , says Sara Davoudi.
The licentiate seminar took place on March 11 at Karlstad University. Opponent at the seminar was Jörgen Elbe, Dalarna University, here you can download the licentiate thesis.
Sara Davoudi is a doctoral student in Business administration linked to the research group Samot, The Service and Market Oriented Transport Research Group. The licentiate thesis is a result of Sara Davoudis’ licentiate project “Method development work on Traffic Supply Program for Sustainable Development in the Region of Värmland. The project entailed both field work as well as postgraduate studies on the development and implementation of “Service Provision Program for Sustainable Development in Värmland” which is a program of regional development and sustainability based on all three perspectives (economic, social and environmental).