Public Transport and its Users

The Passenger's Perspective in Planning and Customer Care

Hans-Liudger Dienel, Martin Schiefelbusch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351907576
• Subtopic: Local & Regional Planning Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Public transport is essential to the quality of life of its passengers, both as a means to move around but also to achieve a sustainable environment. However, the passenger's position as a customer is weakened by the dominance of monopolies, regulation and political influence in our public transport systems. This book is one of the first to examine strategies for the representation of user interests in public transport from a variety of perspectives. The authors review approaches to integrating the passengers' views in the planning process and to protecting their interests in operations and customer care across a range of European countries, including Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and EU policies. The book presents the conclusions of this research and examples of good practice. In this respect it will provide useful guidance for policy makers, stakeholder organizations and planners, as well as transport researchers.

Chapter 1
Passenger Interests in Public Transport

Martin Schiefelbusch

After the introduction, and before the different possibilities for participation and representation of user interests are discussed, this chapter aims to provide a brief overview about the subject of this book. The following pages therefore describe the particularities of consumer representation in public transport and what distinguishes participation in this area from that in other areas of planning.

The chapter is divided in two parts: Section 1.1 presents the institutional setup under which public transport services operate. Section 1.2 goes on to define customer interests in this field – what do they expect in the different stages of planning and providing a transport service?

1.1 The Institutional Context of Public Transport Provision

1.1.1 Dominating Monopolies

The mass provision of public transport (PT) services in cities started as a private sector industry in the nineteenth century, although in most parts of Europe as well as in other developed countries these days are long gone.

Urban and regional public transport, where the lion’s share of journeys are made, has for decades usually been provided either by public sector companies or by operators working under licences granted by public authorities and hence under monopoly conditions. As a result, typically only one service provider is available to satisfy a particular transport need fixed by route, time and additional service requirements.

For long-distance transport the situation is slightly different as competition between different modes – for example, railways, long-distance coaches and aviation – has been less strictly regulated, and liberalization started earlier here than it did in local markets. Hence competition between different providers can exist in a particular corridor, but even here it is not necessarily intense. Furthermore, many of the private operators that existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century have been transformed into publicly-owned companies which operate across the country. Despite the more or less comprehensive liberalization of air, coach and rail markets in the recent past, these providers usually still dominate their national markets.

In this context one ought to remember that this market structure is not restricted to regulated markets or nationalized operators: Even in the UK, where public transport was deregulated in the 1980s,¹ on-street competition has largely ceased and is now limited to a small number of very busy corridors in the main metropolitan areas. Otherwise, local services have reverted to local monopolies which – in contrast to the old system – now are almost exclusively privately owned.² On the privatized British rail market, competition outside the system of franchised operations has been slow to develop as well.

Consequently, customers cannot express dissatisfaction with the service on offer by switching to another operator, the so-called ‘exit’ option.³ Therefore a key incentive for the provider to orientate its service to the users’ needs is missing.

The only alternative for ‘exit’ is to choose another mode, as demonstrated by the reducing market shares and/or passenger numbers of public transport in the last decades. However, to choose other modes is not always practical and usually – in case of car use – not desirable from the perspective of transport policy.

According to Hirschman, the alternative to ‘exit’ gives users a ‘voice’. As will be discussed later, possibilities for doing so are at present not well developed either in many regions, hence to ‘voice’ criticism is also fraught with difficulties.⁴ But there are ways in which transport providers, authorities and civil society organizations can improve the position of passengers. These possibilities are therefore the main focus of this book, leaving aside for the moment thoughts about better ‘exit’ – that is competition on the market.

1.1.2 Political Intervention

Political influence on service planning, provision and funding has always been strong because cities, regions and states are either owners of transport companies or influence the service through regulation or contracting policy. They decide on the amount of money available to run services and maintain infrastructure and also shape intermodal competition with political decisions.

As a result, passengers might seek to influence service provision by means of the political process either through lobbying activities or by making use of political authorities’ role as the owners of service providers. However, this approach is indirect and time-consuming. The chances of being heard are bound by the stakeholders’ position in the political system where they have to compete for attention and resources with other policy objectives. Without suitable procedures, these circumstances are likely to have a negative impact on the users’ possibilities to ‘voice’ their concerns.

Regulatory reform that has taken place on the national and European level since the 1990s has added another dimension to this dilemma. Following the EU’s concept of market liberalization, subsidies can only be paid to operators after non-discriminatory tendering procedures or based on contracts between providers and authorities. This means that the tendering/contracting authority becomes the operator’s most important business partner, as deficit compensation typically represents the largest individual source of revenue. Income from fares, on the other hand, has to be generated from a far greater number of individual users who are much more difficult to win over.

1.1.3 A Special Legal Relationship

In contrast to most other sectors, public transport operators have traditionally been exempted from civil law obligations requiring producers to replace or compensate consumers for the malfunctioning of their products. It is thus at the operator’s discretion whether they offer compensation to passengers, a situation which in the past has provided little incentive for good customer care or complaints handling. As a result, the legal situation can be described as follows: the ticket purchased does not guarantee the customer that a certain journey can be undertaken based on the published information but rather offers the ‘permission to use – within the spatial and temporal limitations of the ticket – a public transport vehicle if one happens to pass by’.⁵

This situation clearly puts the users at a disadvantage, both directly for those affected and indirectly because it can be interpreted as another incentive to reduce service standards. A controversial debate about the adequacy of these lower consumer care standards has developed in recent years (see Sections 1.2.4, 2.6, 2.7).

1.1.4 The Role of Public Transport for Society

Transport has traditionally been seen as not just an ordinary commodity, but also a prerequisite for many other economic and social activities. The role of public transport has changed over time. Instead of providing the backbone for the movement of passengers and goods, as in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, its role today is to be available as an alternative to the private automobile. Such an alternative is desirable for several reasons, such as environmental, energy and social policy objectives. But in order to succeed, its hybrid position between market and politics has to be borne in mind. On the one hand, the political sphere shapes PT’s competitive position, as explained elsewhere in this section, in particular by providing funding to address those objectives which would be left out if operators were to adopt a purely commercial perspective. On the other hand, however, despite these different interests, in the end public transport has to prove itself on the transport market in competition with other modes, because in most situations modal choice cannot be influenced by prohibitions or obligations.

This hybrid nature also creates two distinct leitmotifs for transport user representation. It can be driven by the experiences they have as consumers, but also – and perhaps even more so – by the conviction to support other objectives if public transport becomes more successful (Section 4.6.1). The work of passenger organizations therefore has similarities to that of other pressure groups campaigning for nature protection and other environmental aims.

The posited starting point for the considerations presented in this book is that the market structure described above does not guarantee that users’ views will be integrated into the planning process. Hence there is a need for practices and structures that allow public transport passengers to express their interests directly, efficiently and in a timely manner.

1.2 Dimensions of User Interests

The reference to customer care might lead one to consider the position of public transport users as a problem for those departments dealing with complaints, comments and direct interaction between the provider and its customers. However, the previous section has shown that the passengers’ position is also influenced by the wider framework. An effective dialogue with the customer must therefore go beyond the typical activities of customer care.

Looking more closely at the issue of user interests, it becomes apparent that these cannot be reduced to ex-post compensation for a lack of quality alone. An easy resolution of conflicts on the personal/individual level is a poor compensation if the service as a whole does not meet the users’ needs. Hence a comprehensive view on the whole process of service planning and production is necessary. In doing so, four levels or layers of user interests can be identified which will be discussed in more detail in the following sections:

1. – on the political level, the competitive framework for public transport is set up and the strategic decisions on the service level are made;
2. – on the planning level, concepts for the service are developed and planned in detail including the preparation of operations and the level of spare capacity provided;
3. – on the provision level, these concepts are implemented, one of the main objectives being that deviations from the pre-planned pattern are kept to a minimum;
4. – on the practical level, however, problems cannot be avoided and therefore one needs to think about practical solutions to problems arising from deficits in quality.

The various issues which have to be addressed are of course connected and not always limited to just one of these levels. Simila...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Public Transport and ITS Users
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• About the Authors
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Passenger Interests in Public Transport
• 2 Consumer Protection in Public Transport
• 3 Customer Perspective in Quality Management
• 4 User Participation in Public Transport
• 5 Planning Public Transport, Customer Representation and Passenger Rights in Europe
• 6 The Future of Passengers’ Rights and Passenger Participation
• Bibliography
• Index