With the implementation of public transport measures, governments often want to achieve several objectives: they aim to increase public transport usage, decrease car usage and increase cost recovery ratios. However, in practice, goals are not always achieved. Therefore the Transport Research Centre of the Dutch Ministry of Transport has undertaken research on how to reach those goals by studying examples of successful European applications of public transport. The research focused on the following main questions: which European urban regions have successful public transport and which factors attributed to this success? The factors studied are integrated transport policy, administrative organisation, specific urban characteristics, policies, and developments in urban planning and economy. Several European cities have been visited and persons involved in the public transport planning have been interviewed. A set of hypotheses on how to achieve successful public transport has been formulated, based on experience in these cities. The paper discusses the conclusions drawn from the study. A finding is that successful public transport is the result of a number of factors; strategic vision, organisation and quality. These factors are explained in the paper.
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