THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT

The world is changing rapidly and attempting to look forward is as difficult as it is necessary. Market trends play an important role in the way different consumer groups define or adjust their behaviour. In order to succeed in your core function as business or government, it is crucial to plan for trends and respond to those. One of these organisations is the public transport provider. In this thesis, 13 important trends with a considerable impact on public transport have been found which are: ageing, population growth, transforming families and household sizes, globalization, shift of economic power, urbanization, individual empowerment, pressure on natural resources, innovation and technological development, knowledge society, flexible working, sharing economy and declining popularity car use. Tentative statements are conducted, following from the literature analysis. These statements are then tested by using a questionnaire with experts’ opinions. For analyzing the results the strength of consensus method is used. According to the results, the observation was that urbanization, population growth and pressure on natural resources are the trends expected to affect the public transport strongly positive and the trends sharing economy, ageing and individual empowerments are expected to influence the public transport strongly negative. Moreover, regarding the trend of sharing economy it appeared that there is a big lack of clarity for its effects. It is recommended to policy makers to increase the frequency and efficiency or to provide alternative routes in order to cope with the growth in demand. Moreover, it is also advised to provide public transport services from urban sprawl areas to cities and vice versa and to enhance the accessibility of public transport for the ageing population.