Prior to mass car ownership, viable public transport services could be provided in most rural areas. With car ownership and use increasingly being the first choice of even elderly people, those households which depend on public transport are finding themselves unable to access essential services and facilities. Traditional methods of transport delivery are decreasingly successful, with unsustainable rural bus subsidies failing to meet the needs of the population. New approaches are emerging with systems that are more demand responsive. The CO-OPERATE project was funded under the UK Future Integrated Transport Research programme managed by the Department for Transport, to identify techniques to foster joint working between users and providers. This paper describes the CO-OPERATE approach and in particular how personal construct psychology techniques were adapted for use in the transport sector to help stimulate attitude change and manage behaviour change. To test the emerging techniques a pilot area was used in North East Scotland to analyse user perceptions within a situation of change in rural transport management. From this basis, the research developed a toolkit which has the potential to be applied across Europe for involving more stakeholders in improving rural accessibility. The research also identified areas where organisational culture change, developments in administration and funding, enhancements in marketing, routes to increase understanding of local perceptions of public transport, and stimulation of local and community based initiatives can all be used to build bridges to co-operation between stakeholders to enhance service delivery. For the covering abstract please see ITRD E135207.
Abstract