High quality public transport is an essential part of the toolkit to tackle traffic congestion, pollution related deaths and other adverse side effects of cities’ and towns’ dependence on the car. However, with deregulated provision, such as the bus market in the UK, Public Transport service planners & operators face a range of financial operations & social challenges to developing and providing affective public transport services.

This two-day course provides a practical guide to operations planning, improved scheduling, market forecasting and economic appraisal methods for the development of bus and tram services. 

Key issues addressed on this course are:

• Urban public transport market structure

• Data sources on ridership, especially the use of smartcard data

• Timetable development

• Service reliability

• Vehicle scheduling

• Demand forecasting

• Financial and economic appraisal and project evaluation

The course includes a ’hands on’ exercise, using given data for an expected demand level, vehicle costs, round trip times, etc. to estimate total and unit costs of producing a bus service.

The course is designed for planners and managers in the industry, national, regional and local government, and consultants who deal with short range public transport planning and operations. No advanced knowledge in mathematical methods or computers is required, although a working knowledge of commonly-used spreadsheets (such as Excel) would be useful. It will also be of benefit to practicing public transport professionals or those engaged in the transport and planning industry. Those involved in operating, planning and marketing services will also find value in this course. All participants will be issued with a certificate of attendance.

At the end of the course delegates will:

• Have a good basic knowledge of the techniques used in operations planning including scheduling, route and network planning, strategic planning, economic appraisal and market forecasting in urban public transport.

Be acquainted with new methods which have significant potential for improving the cost-effectiveness of short range public transport planning.

• Be acquainted with traditional operations and service planning, including scheduling procedures, and new approaches.

• Have access to a range of practical methods for day to day planning work in the transit industry.

• Have a better understanding of the roles and perspectives of the range of disciplines encompassed by modern urban public transport planning.