A composite quality index of public transport and shared mobility services

Abstract

Public transport (PT) was, for many years, the sole publicly available mode of transportation. In recent years, however, shared mobility services (e.g., e-scooters and car sharing) that co-exist with PT have emerged in cities around the globe. Despite the widespread view that their integration with PT is beneficial, the assessment of their impact on the quality of the transport system remains challenging, and questions such as where they should be made available have not been satisfactorily answered.

This paper addresses this gap by proposing a composite quality index that combines public transport and shared mobility. The objective is to expand existing PT quality indices by including shared mobility services, thereby reflecting the reality in cities where shared mobility exists. This index will allow for an assessment of the quality of public transport options on a spatially disaggregated level, thereby indicating where shared mobility can most be a useful complement to PT. The index combines data on transport infrastructure and shared mobility services, public transport schedules, and socio-demographic information. It primarily relies on open data sources such as OpenStreetMap and on open data formats such as GTFS and GBFS. The index is applied at a hyperlocal level and then visualised on a map for selected cities in Germany. This allows for an easy-to-see examination of the difference in service levels between districts and between urban and suburban areas. The index enables the identification of areas where minimum standards are not met, and for the monitoring of the development of the public transport (PT) and shared mobility offering over time. It is anticipated that the index will support urban planning, policy making and PT companies in planning their transport systems and service provision on a spatially disaggregated level.