Public Transport Best Practices Database
One of the key problems with public involvement is that transportation and city planning are quite complex. We believe that people can generate better ideas if they can learn a little about transport technology. As part of the GreenCityStreets Project, we created a set of Word Press pages and a wiki that present information about public transport operations. They were designed to be used with the BusMeister game to help educate people so they can provide more helpful input.
The Word Press pages explain public transport operations in an easy to understand way. The introduction page is illustrated on the right (we’re using a new theme now). Where possible we use videos, photos and diagrams to explain concepts. We also include reference links for more detailed information.
The Improve Public Transport wiki was designed to provide more detailed information about public transport operations including the latest research results. The wiki is illustrated on the left and can be accessed at
Improve Public Transport wiki.
Improve Public Transport Word Press based website homepage.
Improve Public Transport wiki home page.
Approach and Results
The idea for developing the public transport best practices database came about because we thought it would be good to present an organized summary of information on public transport best practices. Our initial approach was to develop a wiki with a set of top level pages presenting easy-to-understand summary information linked to a set of pages presenting more detailed information targeted towards professionals and researchers (and which they could use as a sort-of continuously updated literature review). After developing the wiki, we also developed the Word Press introductory level pages because we thought these might be easier for the public to use.
The goal was to create a wiki that would generate sufficient interest so that researchers and public transport planners would add and edit information. This wiki would then serve as a database of information on public transport research and best practices. In the end we were not able to generate sufficient interest in the wiki for it to become self-sufficient (i.e., where a community of people adds and edits the wiki information).
What did we learn?
- We still think that a better organised public transport information wiki would be useful, but believe that this must be created by an organisation and/or as part of a larger project in order for it to reach the critical mass needed to be (mostly) self-sufficient;
- We think that the Word Press pages would not be needed if the wiki were better designed and organised.
We’d be happy to discuss project results with you, just contact us.
