Congestion in many cities is reaching the critical level. Promising solutions are urgently needed to tackle this problem and one of these solutions is a better use of public transport. Over the past two decades, public transport has radically changed in various aspects such as technological developments and regulatory reforms. However, there is a lack of empirical research to understand a complete perspective of how these developments took place and established in the systems, especially in an aspect of technological innovations. Thus this paper intends to search for a useful theory which can examine innovations in public transport in an extensive view. The aim of this paper is to analyse characteristics of public transport service in which technological and organisational innovations have effected the development. This paper introduces a twin characteristics approach as an analytical tool. This approach divides the characteristics of a given technology into two types: technical and service characteristics. These sets of characteristics are related by patterns of mapping. This study reveals two important issues. First, the characteristics of public transport are complex and changing over time. The variety of inputs and outputs in public transport industry are of importance in assessing its performance. Secondly, by applying the twin characteristics approach, it is found that there is a strong relationship between developments of urban public transport technology and the efficiency and effectiveness of public transport services. (Author/publisher)
Abstract