Indicators to monitor the effects of bus renewal on general mobility in the agglomeration
If the agglomeration, where the buses are being renewed, is committed to a global mobility planning policy, it may be interesting for the mobility or transport organising authority (AOM or AOT) to measure the effects of the changing public transport offer on mobility behaviour as part of a global mobility survey with a relatively wide scope.
Coverage of the agglomeration by the transport network
First of all, it may be interesting to look at how the expansion of the bus offer, in terms of frequency or increase in the number of routes, can cover more of the population of the agglomeration and the drivers of demand for travel in the agglomeration (schools, sixth form colleges, public and private employment centres, hospital or other facilities, etc.). These observations can be mapped out. Simple maps produced with a Geographic Information System (GIS) would be able to show and calculate the following:
• The population living less than 500 m from the routes or bus stops
• The facilities located less than 500m from the routes.
These indicators can be educational for comparing the urban planning of the agglomeration and its transport network, make elected officials aware of the problems of the links to higher education and university establishments using public transport and manage the development of two-wheeled motor vehicles for example.
Distribution of movement modes in the agglomeration
The modal share of the different movement modes are a common indicator used in agglomerations around the world to know which modes of transport are used for all the movements observed in the agglomeration. These indicators can be calculated in agglomerations that conduct “household movement surveys” during which a large representative sample of households in the agglomeration are asked questions about their mobility practices. However, these surveys are ponderous and costly. In the agglomerations of emerging or developing countries, if general mobility studies have not already been carried out by teams of consultants, other more pragmatic methods can be used to grasp some knowledge about the use of travel modes, by conducting counts at certain points of the agglomeration’s road network (automatic traffic counter survey).
The observation of the effects of improving the bus offer can be done more simply on a movement corridor, by monitoring the change in the use of the corridor’s bus route at the same time as that of the traffic using individual modes (car, two-wheeled motorised vehicles). The creation of a specific site reserved for the bus route can in the long term help to encourage people to switch their movements from using individual modes to the bus route, which is what most major agglomerations want.
