During November 6-8, 2011, Venice will host UITP’s international conference “Making public transport part of a modern urban lifestyle? Yes we can!”. The event seeks to promote the attempt to double the public transport worldwide market share by 2025, a campaign initiated by UITP and to boost the importance of public transport in improving the life quality. To protect the environment and increased the life quality, the authorities, next to the citizens of each and every city must join efforts in the attempt to implement programmes directed towards the same goal.
Interview with:
Hans Rat, Secretary General UITP
Michael Lichtenegger, Development and Managing Director, Wiener Linien, Vienna, Austria
Patrick Vautier, Marketing Director, RATP Dev, Paris, France
Railway Pro: What does adopting a lifestyle means for a city from the point of view of public transport?
Hans Rat: Those who visited the Chinese National Pavilion at the Universal Expo in Shanghai had the chance to fully understand what “modern lifestyle” means to city dwellers. China exposed, during that event, the XI c. panoramic painting “Along the River during the Qing Ming Festival” that captures the daily life of people from the Song period. Some more steps further on a video showing the present and future Chinese urban life was also displayed. No matter how crowded by people, buildings, cars and other urban activities, both past and future Chinese representations of life in the city are peaceful and harmonic. This anecdote is an example to show how the strongest economies of the world are focusing their efforts to optimise energy and technological resources to face the challenges of ever increasing urban populations.
In this perspective, public transport is no more seen as a service for worse off people; on the contrary, most of these solid countries are considering it as a mean to live a balanced city life. The opposite example are the countries, whose urban life and economy strongly based on private car, make people live in isolation in suburbs and suffer of overweight, provokes the highest energy consumption of the world and make them fight against the debt.
When you want to adopt a lifestyle you need to observe the trends. And today’s trends in the densely populated urban areas of well developed economies is that young generations are more concerned about environmental issues, health, and they consider car’s ownership as part of the their parents’ lifestyle. To them an iPhone is a more of a status symbol than a car. Modern trend is a bit veering off the use of car.The city, as urban fabric, should allow citizens to live a peaceful and easygoing life. This means less traffic noise, less congestion, less pollution, more pedestrian areas, and more green spots. In this regards, the integration of public transport to the urban landscape is unquestioned and through the introduction of new technologies for passenger information and fare collection public transport can definitely help achieve the goal of a harmonic city life.
Michael Lichtenegger: Moving through the city, being mobile, is one of the basic behaviours of every day urban life. Therefore it is an important issue how mobility is practised by the citizens. People are ready for a change if a new, upcoming way of life is attractive, convenient, well known, easy in use as well as safe and secure and – this is of high importance – if it is a common trend with a global public awareness and a positive image. This is the reason why public transport experts have to act consistently customer focused and invest in marketing activities. This way it is possible to convince people in moving around in a smart, sustainable and commonly preferred way, which is accepted as a young, future oriented, attractive urban lifestyle.
Patrick Vautier: In fact ,the question is more focused on the citizens than on the city itself, from a the point of view of a public transport, the first issue is to understand and to integrate what are the main elements of inhabitants’ lifestyles.
Our business is more driven by the offering, the operation process, than steered by the demand.Part of it is normal because operation must be liable and that need strong, industrial process. This is not very flexible but it is a must do to serve PT Users.
We know that we don’t “own” our users, our customers. These people are also customers, consumers, tax payers,;; ;of numerous and various services. All these services, all their consumption, all the promotion of these devices, services are creating what we call life style. To be attractive, to be competitive with others modes in the mobility market, we must adapt our offer to be more and more aligned with these expectations and lifestyle.
Railway Pro: Changing the lifestyle, for every citizen, implies a process which is, most of the time, difficult to adapt to the new social requirements. How can the citizens be encouraged to change their behaviour and to give up individual motorized means of transport in favour of public transport?
Hans Rat: In order to encourage citizens to change their behaviour, we need to offer them a full portfolio of mobility services that can include: public transport, “clean” taxis, go-as-you-please bike rental services, wholly developed car- and bike-sharing systems, more urban space to smoothly run public transport, well devised boarding spots to get easy access to public transport and bike connections and a downtown area well served by public transport and limited to car traffic.Combined mobility is a clever and efficient way to bring people out of their cars and into public transport.
At the end of WW2, West-European countries developed their cities mainly for car access. Inevitably they experienced the bad effects of this choice and at the end of the ‘80s things started to change with many countries adopting policies that limit car access in the cities. It would be a pity if East-European countries entered the same “vicious circle” the West-European ones are trying to escape. They should rather “go back to the future” and invest on the improvement of the existing public transport networks, by putting the customer at the centre of their company strategy, with innovative human resources practices to attract talented people, motivate and develop staff loyalty and changing the old-fashioned “fleet manager” business culture; and by improving the image and brand of their public transport company to make people proud to use public transport and staff proud to work in the sector.Let me tell you my personal experience. Although I am entitled to my private car parking at UITP Main Office, almost every day to go to work, I run my bicycle till the closest metro station which is situated, in my case, in one of the most fashionable shopping malls of Brussels and it makes my trip more pleasant and moreover satisfies helps me to practice 30 minutes of daily physical activity for health as recommended by the WHO. For external meetings or business lunches in Brussels I also use public transport and every commute in the city becomes easier, more pleasant, more sociable and more convenient. It is about creating value to services to make the travel time as a positive moment of lifetime for the customers, to make citizens happy not to have to use their car.
As example I am not the only one: many of my employees here in Brussels do the same. Some of them do not even own a car, as useless for their daily city life, or a bicycle as they use the practical and convenient Brussels’ bike-sharing scheme (Villò).
Michael Lichtenegger: If we want to change the lifestyle of the citizens, public transport companies have to offer attractive services, have to act deeply customer oriented. Transit services should be convenient and advantageous out of the individual customer´s point of view. At the same time the image of the service and the strength and attractiveness of the public transport brand have to evolve positively in parallel. If this goes hand in hand with a common tendency towards a sustainable and environmentally friendly way of life – and in urban areas we are facing this phenomenon today! – the change of behaviour could take place even more rapidly.
Patrick Vautier: The issue is not only to develop PT Usage, it is to change people behaviour if we want to preserve environment and to attract more riders.Even talented advertising pressure is not enough if we don’t change the core elements of our services, i.e. rolling stocks, buses. Just imagine that the life time of a train is 50 years. Do you imagine to use the same car for 50 years without changing ?
To change people behaviour is to change our core product.
If we are successful to transform our approach in order to be more customer oriented, our “product” Public transport” will be more appreciated and asked. then, it will be able to change the mobility behaviours.It is part of the marketing duty to find the right way to combine both aspirations of users and suppliers. Why don’t we promote the idea of “easy to refurbish skins of trains and buses” ?
One big challenge is to create desire and to move from a rational vision of Public transport to a more emotional one. Reason may help us to explain our advantages for the city and its inhabitants, but it is not enough to convince them to try, to use, to adopt Public transport as the beloved preferred choice for urban mobility
The second challenge is to deliver a very simple, intuitive easy to use service. let’s break all the obstacles which were often created for technical or bureaucratic reasons in other ages to open up our mind to others more user friendly solutions. Lot of us have already lost their leadership on urban and transport mapping because they were sure to be “protected” by their know how. But Google and others came and they hustled habits and now the game is over. I guess it will be the same with real time information data. Our sector used to build “in house” solutions but it won’t be still available in such an interconnected world. Partnership is the solution to build smart solutions because it imposes us the vision of the customers.
Railway Pro: What is the role of public transport in boosting the economy of the cities in emerging countries?
Hans Rat: In countries as the USA, with a car-based economy, the cost of mobility is two times the same cost than in countries relying on public transport. Singapore, Hong Kong and Munich spend about 6% of their GDP in mobility, whereas Huston spends 14%, and that includes both the cost for the society and the individuals. It’s evidence that relying on private car represents a burden for citizens and national economies, meaning a bad strategy for countries’ budgets and employment.
Michael Lichtenegger: It is a fact that a high level of mobility is one of the key issues for a developing economy. A good transport system is an important indicator in the competition of cities. Mobile citizens are fit for a full range of job options and guarantee well educated, well trained, flexible and professional staff for the economy. Public transport offers a clean, environmentally friendly and safe mobility solution, which guarantees a high quality of life. The full range of this advantages can be offered by a good, future oriented public transport system. Public transport services could do this job especially in urban areas much better than a “traditional, old fashioned” network of streets for too many, noisy, dangerous and polluting private cars.
Patrick Vautier: Urbanization is a mega trend of emerging countries and it is primarily a sign of economic development. Who says Urban Development also said Mobility development : More people, more trips for work, school, recreation, shopping.Cities of the future demand credible answers to pool their mobility needs, their sustainable development in service to their attractiveness, competitiveness, quality of life.The only solutions to keep our cities livable are scenarios that combine proactive development and control of mobility solutions for the public.Urban mobility is currently 7.5 billion trips a day, all modes included. Buses, trams, trains and subways provide only 16% of this traffic.Changes in lifestyles, economic development, aspirations of citizens within 15 years will generate a volume of 11.3 billion trips per day.
Railway Pro: What can you tell us about shifting from private to public transport from the point of view of urban organisation so as to increase the social comfort?
Hans Rat: First of all, urban policies and planning and mobility providers need to join their horizons and constantly go hand in hand. Any development of the urban fabric must be accompanied by an adequate public transport service and related infrastructures (bus lanes, separated tram tracks, etc.), comfortable accessibility to public transport, bicycle parking and integration between public transport and shops or other social facilities (post offices, banks, cinemas, etc).All these issues will be covered by the UITP International Conference “Making Public Transport part of a modern urban lifestyle? Yes, we can!” to be held in Venice, 6-8 November 2011.
Michael Lichtenegger: The secret behind the success in changing the citizen´s behaviour is adapting public mobility services to the specific needs of the inhabitants and the specific framework of the city and the region. There are thousands of global strategies and solutions and a wide range of technological and logistic tools available. Public transport actors can learn from each other. Public transport experts have to be deeply interested in best practices and should exchange their experiences during conferences like this wonderful UITP marketing conference in Venice. The challenge is to adapt the global know how to the individual needs, culture, lifestyle and frame conditions of the individual region. This way enables us to be successful in increasing social comfort for all people in our cities!
Patrick Vautier: In this area, Public Transport is an effective solution to serve as a sustainable mobility, space-saving and fuel-efficient transport capacity, economic performance, preserving the environment and health.The challenge of public transport is crucial because they are the only “tools” that ensure massive mobility fluidity while being able to both reduce traffic congestion, develop the economy, preserve the environment.
The positive effects of this proactive “green and sustainable” scenario are considerable:
• 180,000 lives could be saved each year by reducing accidents. It is 30% of diseases related to hyper tension, 50% of cardiovascular diseases and obesity that would be avoided by walking associated with the use of public transport. The impact is also important in diseases related to allergies and pollution.
Each year, doubling the market share of public transport represents the savings of 600 million tons of CO2,170 million tons of oil. It is also a tremendous economic leverage because it amounts to double the direct and indirect jobs in this sector (13 million jobs today).
We are speaking of hundreds of billions saved every year and the main part of these impacts are in emerging countries.
by Pamela Luică
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