Accessibility report that promotes the right measures
If public transport is to improve, knowledge and facts are needed about how travel, travel times and conditions really are – not in theory or using gut feeling. Nobina therefore produces its own accessibility reports that use precise analysis and data to show the benefits society can gain by improving accessibility.
Public transport must constantly improve if it is to attract more travellers and if we are to reach the target that four of ten motorised journeys will use public transport in 2030. In our latest accessibility report from 2023, we analysed actual travel times for bus traffic in Sweden, where accessibility is insufficient, and which measures are most effective.
Refined methods
We need to know the reality of bus traffic and travel times if we are to implement the right measures that will have a real impact at a reasonable cost. Nobina has therefore published its own accessibility reports using data from our bus traffic in 12 of Sweden’s 21 regions. After the first report in 2019, we have now developed the methodology and use real-time data from the buses’ GPS system. This produced 40 billion datapoints that were used as the basis for the analysis.
Huge economic potential
The report indicates huge economic potential to be gained from improving accessibility. Traffic costs could be reduced by SEK 509 million per year through better accessibility, and conversely costs could increase by SEK 667 million per year if accessibility were to deteriorate. In a similar way, ticket revenue could increase by SEK 800 million per year with better accessibility, while poorer accessibility would result in a loss of SEK 1 billion in revenue per year. In other words, there is total economic potential of SEK 1.8 billion, which could be used for more public transport and to enable more people to travel by bus rather than car.
18 million more journeys
In addition to the economic aspects, a lack of accessibility and increased travel times lead to higher CO2 emissions, particle emissions, more noise and congestion. It also reduces the attractiveness of public transport, with the risk that more people choose to travel by car. Conversely, improved accessibility is estimated to increase travel by 18 million journeys per year – corresponding to half of Malmö’s city transport services.
Examples of effective measures
Flowmapper* can also forecast the effects of various measures. The accessibility report therefore also includes examples of effective and ineffective infrastructure measures, to provide knowledge and inspiration so that the measures that have the greatest impact on travel times can be chosen. Effective measures include signal priority, bus lanes and optimised timetables based on driving times over the course of the day. The accessibility report describes precisely how the data was obtained, the differences between various regions, and so forth.
*The report was prepared with assistance from Tyréns Solutions and the Flowmapper Analytics tool, which can identify accessibility shortcomings in detail, calculate the resulting costs, forecast the impact of various measures and adapt timetables based on actual driving times. GPS data directly from buses 40 billion datapoints.