BRT - Evaluation of four Swedish projects

Purpose and goal

We valuate bus systems in Sweden to improve decision making. Key aspects are cost efficiency, attitudes, planning and urban environment. Our results suggest that the attractiveness of a bus system requires long-term and systematic work with a focus on customer-oriented design and marketing. It seems to be more effective to focus on the entire bus system (in terms of schedules, routes, and soft policy measures) than on a specific service. New vehicles and infrastructure improvements have a limited impact. There is no evidence that car use decreased even if bus used increased.

Expected results and effects

We have had a high degree of collaboration between research institutes and universities, the industry, citizens (via the media) and decision-makers to ensure dissemination of results. This can lead to a better basis for decisions on cost-effective public transport. A key problem has been that in large costly investments in public transport, the principals seldom make sure to collect data that enable evaluation against the targets they want to achieve. In the long-run, this makes it difficult to improve service quality and cost efficiency in the public transport sector.

Planned approach and implementation

We have collected and analyses a number of data sources. For example, we use two travel surveys that were conducted in Karlstad in 2004 and 2014, as well as the customer satisfaction surveys that were conducted in Karlstad 2004-2014. In Malmö, there is no travel survey that can be used to evaluate the demand effects of the Malmöexpressen, but we analyze the traffic counts instead. We conducted a survey with questions about satisfaction and SP questions, among passengers on the bus line, before and after Malmöexpressen was launched.