Helping transport professionals fast track their success
Understanding the essence of transport integration is the first step to building a successful transport system.
The term “integration” gets used a lot by transport planners. But what does it really mean?
Let us consider the importance of integration from a user’s perspective. It can be distilled down to issues pertaining to time, cost, and quality of transport.
Moving people has often been considered from a mode perspective – by road or rail – rather than taking a whole of transport approach, ie integrated transport.
Now with increasing travel demand and resource constraints it is more critical that proper consideration is given to the factors that ensure integration success.
A recent report published by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia “Integrating Australia’s Transport Systems: a strategy for an efficient transport future” [1].
Transport planners are facing the competing demands of delivering better mobility vs tightening budgets.
How can we as transport professionals meet these challenges?
The key is to employ best practice integrated transport planning. This entails using a systematic, sustained and accountable framework, that clearly addresses community (customer) needs.
So what are these best practice essentials?