Are travel information services realising their true potential?

Professor Glenn Lyons, Centre for Transport & Society, University of the West of England, Bristol, asks if we are properly understanding what users – and potential users – really want to help their travel decision-making

fessor Glenn Lyons, Centre for Transport & Society, University of the West of England

14 July 2009

Professor Glenn Lyons, Centre for Transport & Society, University of the West of England

One senses that a particular belief continues to endure somewhere deep in the psyche of many transport professionals: people want to make travel decisions that are as fully-informed as possible.

In turn there is a hope, if not a belief, that better informed decisions will lead to ‘better’ use of the transport network overall. Perhaps accordingly, better and wider provision of travel information was a key theme in the 1998 Transport White Paper. With this policy impetus, allied to...