PROCEED, a 3-year project (10/2006-01/2010) co-financed by the European Commission within the 6th RTD Framework Programme, has developed a guideline-tool
for effective and efficient public (bus) transport systems in small and medium-sized European cities.
In order to ease the practical use of the PROCEED guidelines, the online-guideline-tool is available in several languages: you can explore the guidelines in
English, French, German, and Polish.
What's the purpose of this guideline-tool, and who should use it?
The PROCEED
guidelines are designed to help decision makers and transport planners (e.g.
public transport authorities, local authorities, operators, consultants)
efficiently and effectively plan, develop, upgrade, finance and manage urban
bus systems and related mobility services. The goal is to arrive at 'High
Quality Public Transport' (HQPT) systems.
The guidelines are, in the first instance, addressed to practitioners in urban public transport. They are intended to answer practical
questions related to planning, implementing, and operating a High Quality bus system in small to medium-sized cities.
The structure of the PROCEED guideline-tool
Planning a HQPT bus system means considering a set of 5 main tasks - this provides the general structure of the PROCEED guideline-tool:
making a proper analysis of the local situation and the respective user needs
-->Guidelines on "Methods for market analysis",
drawing-up a network design that fits the local public transport demand
-->Guidelines on "Developing and upgrading Network and Infrastructure",
ensuring the system's financing
-->Guidelines on "Financing",
establishing an efficient system management
-->Guidelines on "Management",
carrying out comprehensive marketing
-->Guidelines on "Marketing strategies".
The general aim is to keep
each guideline and its description as short and simple as possible: each guideline gives concise clear advice to follow. Explanatory information, selected good practice examples, references, background reading, and advice regarding critical issues help to give a better understanding of the respective guideline.
Some recommendations cannot be assigned to a single guideline since they refer to more than one guideline or make reference to
some "tips and tricks" underlying some transport solutions for urban bus planning. Therefore, so-called "high-level guidelines"
have been included as additional recommendations.
Applying the PROCEED guideline-tool to the user's situation:
In order to assist users to apply the PROCEED guidelines to their own situation, a filtering and selection system points users to the guidelines that are most relevant to them. In this search system the guidelines are clustered according to the following three aspects:
relevance of the respective guideline to different stakeholders (e.g. decision makers, public authorities, transport operators)
relevance of the respective guideline for a specific level of the planning process (Level 1: Master plan and politics - Level 2: Market analysis - Level 3: System planning - Level 4: Operations)
relevance of the respective guideline for a specific stage of the quality pyramid (Stage 1: Basic service - Stage 2: Quality upgrade - Stage 3: Organisational improvement)
It is also possible to search for a guideline based on keywords.
Users who are looking for background information on topics relating to the guidelines, can easily retrieve "information boxes".
This background information can be used for educational purposes, and for obtaining more in-depth knowledge.
Keep the local context in mind
The major goal of the guidelines is to include all aspects to be considered when planning a HQPT system. -
However, giving all available solutions for each aspect in detail would exceed the guideline tool's and the project's focus.
The guidelines cannot provide a list of ready-to-go "recipes" for implementation because the local specific features,
the size of the town and its structure are all key determinants of the bus network and operations. Consequently, it
is important to understand that the guidelines have to be adapted to the individual local context.
