Rationale and Concept for Integrated Disruption Information in Public Transport in Scandinavia

Good and relevant information when disruptions occur is one of the most significant points of dissatisfaction among public transport passengers. There are several reasons why the public transport businesses fail to deliver the information the passengers expect. Some of the public transport authorities in Scandinavia has realized the importance of the passenger’s feedback and started to improve in this field. One of the conclusions made by the Scandinavian public transport authorities were that information about disruptions must be seamless integrated in the passenger information. Passengers should be able to have information about disruptions in all media and channels that are used for passenger information, and they should not be forced to specifically search or look for this information. One of the most common problems to produce useful deviation information is actually to get background information quick enough. Therefore, an important part of the solution was to understand how this flow of information could be improved. This turned out to be an organizational challenge with many stakeholders. The author has been involved in the analysis of the requirements and design of the concepts that has been implemented by the major Scandinavian public transport authorities (including Stockholm Transport).