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- Report n°6: Urban Public Transport
Report n°6: Urban Public Transport
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Table of contents
- TEOR, an exclusive right-of-way for guided buses in Rouen
- Innovation as a major criteria to attract new users
- TEOR, an exclusive right-of-way for guided buses in Rouen
Innovation as a major criteria to attract new users
An increased offer and the rise in the quality level progressively augment users' level of expectation. For private cars, today's manufacturers would not venture to offer a model lacking the innovation that consumers have been accustomed to for the past twenty years, even on emergent markets where people are no longer content with petrol-guzzling, polluting and uncomfortable cars, even if they were much cheaper. The same goes for public transport after the advent of the tram which has raised consumer expectation levels.
The notable drop in the tram's evaluation compared to an enquiry in 1998 can probably be explained in part by this familiarity with quality, so that non significant faults are perceived as more serious failures compared to the raised performance of the system. This means that public transport — as in any offer in a competitive environment, or perhaps one should say a comparative environment in view of the modal choice — can only consider itself exempt from the need to innovate after having made a major effort as regards efficiency and attractiveness. In these circumstances, the bus has embarked on a process of modernisation dependent on a less favourable financial climate than ten or twenty years ago, in the "tramway years", so that this mode of transport is more restricted to larger cities.