Apr-2026
Government document intended to outline long-term strategy for integrated transport in England.
Nov-2025
Study into the adoption of digital payments for public transportation in developing cities. The study analyses and evaluates the factors influencing the adoption of of digital payments. Results found that prior use of transport, type of phone owned, internet availability and age have a significant impact on likelihood to use digital payments.
Nov-2025
Study develops a framework for investigating physical encounters of individuals in urban metro systems using smart card data in Shenzhen, China.
Jun-2025
Comprehensive review of uses cases for leveraging smart cards for analytical studies applied to public transport research. Aims to provide insights into smart card data research and highlight potential knowledge gaps that warrant further research.
Jun-2025
Paper intended to develop a methodology to evaluate the benefits of smart ticketing systems. Bases evaluation on 6 KPIs: Validations, Rejected Validations, Ticket Inspections, Sale of Travel Passes, Quality of Service, and Alarms. The study demonstrates this methodology in case study evaluating the Italian Region of Lombardy.
May-2025
Investigation based on interviews with 61 key stakeholders into issues that arose during attempts to produce a national smart ticketing policy. Highlights governments lack of direction when drawing a balance between the development of a national policy and maintaining a "light touch" approach to transport strategy.
May-2025
Study investigates the impact of a mobile app on bus ridership in San Antonio, Texas. Study used random effect regression models to analyse the transit app influence on ridership between 2015 and 2019, accounting for various alternative ridership influences such as fare changes, route characteristics, weather, socioeconomic conditions and the price of petrol. Research found that the app had a positive impact on ridership for infrequent routes, but had less of an impact on frequent services.
Apr-2025
Paper introduces a Machine Learning Influence Flow Analysis framework intended to identify key influencers of public transport usage. Study finds that easy payments, e-ticketing and mobile applications can substantially improve public transport service. Study recommends making use of smart ticketing systems and contactless payments to enable more efficient allocation of resources, resulting in a more streamlined service that encourages increased ridership and improves user satisfaction.
Mar-2025
Study into the impact special and weather events have on urban transport demand, making use of smart card data from 13 municipal districts in 2021 and 2022. Research found that cultural and demographic factors heavily influenced demand, implying that passenger behaviour is intricate and localised. Additionally, weather events such as rain or snow fall caused demand reductions of 8% and 37% respectively.
Mar-2025
Study into the effects that altered travel patterns induced by the covid-19 pandemic have had on the transport sector. Study finds that work-from-home has had a greater impact on train usage patterns than on buses, despite support levels for rail remaining much higher than buses.
Dec-2024
Study concerning attitudes towards service limitations, safety concerns and technological improvements through a demographic lens. The research finds that East Charlotte residents and women face limited routes and longer wait times, black and East Charlotte residents have higher concerns about safety, there are privacy concerns among wealthier and infrequent users and there is strong preference for technological improvements, especially among infrequent users.
Dec-2024
Study makes use of smart card data and travel survey data to determine low-to-middle income residents' secondary activity patterns. Study finds that these users have very few secondary activities, and advocates for urban amenities to be made more accessible.
Nov-2024
Report conducts an analysis on a national bus user survey to determine what bus passengers find most important to a good bus journey. The report recommends further use of franchising and enhanced bus partnerships, alongside work by local authorities to enforce measures to speed up buses to ensure they quickly and on time. The report also recommends reviews of operational and ticketing arrangements to reduce dwell time and reduce cancellations.
Nov-2024
Report advocating for changes to be made to the way buses are funded. The report recommends that funding should be allocated on the basis of need to reduce the funding gap between authorities, that there should be a bus service guarantee, with support provided to local authorities to ensure that it can be delivered, for long term, multi-modal funding settlements for all LTAs, to transfer all bus-related funding from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to the Department for Transport, and ensure it is ringfenced and transparent and requiring NHS trusts to coordinate transport provision with authorities, bus operators and community transport operators.
Oct-2024
Study makes use of smart card data from nearly 9 million subway users to examine the long term impacts of the pandemic on residential locations and subway users in Beijing. Research indicates a notable trend of residential relocation towards the city centre, it is also observed that those with longer commute times are increasingly attempting to reduce their commute times.
Sep-2024
Research into the value produced by bus services in the UK. Reviews economic value in the provision of bus services, value derived from people using the bus in terms of direct benefits to passengers and other road users and value generated from the activities of passengers making use of bus services to spend their money.
Sep-2024
Report reviews options for alternative organisation strategies for the improvement of bus services. The study highlights that the London model of bus franchising may not be appropriate for other areas, especially in smaller cities and rural regions. Additionally, the report encourages realism towards the benefits of bus franchising, noting that Brighton and Hove has a successful bus network, despite functioning on a commercial, deregulated model.
Sep-2024
Study investigates the potential for electronic payment systems already used in domestic flight to be used on public transport systems. The study uses the Technology Acceptance Model to determine levels of passenger acceptance.
Aug-2024
Study makes use of ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, and the ALARA model of information search to examine consumer engagement with mobile payment apps in Lagos, Nigeria. Study finds that cultural preferences and trust in traditional payment systems significantly impact willingness to adopt mobile apps. The study recommends an inclusive technological strategy, developing accessible information channels and user-friendly design features, engaging with users to make continuous improvements to the app and adopting a nuanced understanding of socio-cultural influences on technology adoption to inform policy and business strategies.
Jun-2024
Using smart card data, study aims to analyse user behaviour to determine how users may begin to transition away from bus user. Study notes that users first decrease travel frequency before transitioning to irregular travel patterns. Study recommends retention policies such as tiered usage incentives and personalised communication strategies, aimed at different stages of the user life cycle.
Apr-2024
Study into the demographics and travel behaviour of the users of a smart ticketing system. The study finds that being educated, wealthy and younger increased rates of adoption, and vice versa. The study also found that longer-term smart ticketing users travelled more for recreational activity and work than non- and new users.
Feb-2024
A manifesto produced to communicate demands for improved buses. Points include: decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing reliability, affordability and attractiveness of bus services, staying in touch with requirements of users, taking a cross-departmental approach to transport provision, improving accessibility, inclusivity and transparency, making fares simpler and fairer, lifting restrictions on concessionary tickets, and updating the law to make transport provision a socially necessary service, along with ring-fenced funding.
Jan-2024
Report highlights the importance of demand forecasting, noting that the public transport sector is particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in consumer demand for perishable commodities. The researchers propose a method of demand forecasting for passenger transport which attains a success rate of 98.45%.
Dec-2023
Research conducted into the experience, technical expertise and resources available to Local Transport Authorities for the purposes of achieving the goals set out in the Bus Back Better Report. Study finds that there a number of issues in this aspect relating to lack of staff, especially in smaller LTAs, difficulties in the structure and knowledge of organisations and a reliance on short-term funding and outsourcing.
Nov-2023
Paper makes use of smart card datasets to analyse factors that influence the behaviour in relation to bus line shift, focused on a case study of the public transport network in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Research indicates that users are generally inclined to bus line shifts than using the same lines, with such changes ocurring more frequently during late hours and inter-peak periods compared to morning and afternoon peak hours. Additionally, regular users are more likely to change lines than occasional users, and trips with discounts and smart card usage for transfers on trips home tend to involve different lines. The study considers several policy measures for mitigating passenger discomfort associated with changing bus lines.
Oct-2023
Report on the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the amount of concessionary travel taking place. Report notes a significant reduction (up to a third) in passholder journeys, with elderly people particularly affected. Additionally, whilst there was a decline of 2.6% in active passholders between 2019 and 2022, rural active passholders increased by 1.6%.
Oct-2023
Report advocating for a reform of rail fares and ticketing to make travelling by rail more affordable, accessible and appealing. The report lays out a series of reforms to be made, and advocates for an arms-length body to be established to execute them.
Sep-2023
A report concerning how the 2017 bus services act might be used and amended to improve local bus services. Recommendations include: Updating the 2017 act to reduce the time and cost to set up a franchising model, ensuring that LTAs have operator information when needed, allowing all areas to have the same rights as MCAs to franchise services, removing restrictions on the creation of municipal bus companies, bringing together existing funding into a single devolved funding settlement and maintaining levels of bus investment through the next 5 years.
Aug-2023
Study conducts systematic review into the use of smart card data for analysing mobility patterns, noting that clustering and segmentation techniques have been adapted to conduct market segmentation and analyse urban activity locations.
Jul-2023
Study providing and overview of transit apps used by various transit agencies in the United States. The researchers conducted interviews with 21 transport industry leaders, and synthesized perceived benefits and costs to transit apps. The study identifies five existing business models and emerging trends of transit apps and aims to improve transit app knowledge and provide practical recommendations for future improvements.
Policy and Research Documents
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