SERIE RESEARCH MEMORANDA Travei Information on Urban Public Transport: A Comparative Analysis of Berlin and Amsterdam

This paper emphasises the need for adequate navel information as a policy tool to increase the service leve1 of urban public transport. Particular attention is given to the role and competente of public authorities in offering proper travel information systems. Two elements in particular are highlighted, viz. the management perspective and the institutional context. By means of a comparative case study approach to Amsterdam and Berlin, the actual possibilities of public transport authorities are explored, while finah’y some policy conclusions are formulated. 1 Setting the Scene: The Need for Travel Information Since the early beginning of human history people have coped with the ‘tyranny of distance’. To overcome the limits of geographical space a big effort was needed. Caravan trails and sailing routes are examples of organising a logistic system that would allow for an expansion of the daily action radius. In modern times, this ‘nomadic’ behaviour has not changed. Only the transport modes have changed: the camel has been replaced by the car, the sailing ship by the airplane, the horse drawn carriage by the train, and so forth. In addition, the fiequency of travelling and the distance of trips have increased signitïcantly in the past centuries. Apparently, the modem man is permanently ‘on the move’. Spatial mobility is partly a result of human needs (e.g., recreation, tourism, social and cultural visits), partly an economie necessity caused by a worldwide product differentiation and division of labour. The rise in travel mobility has in recent decades confronted the western societies with severe problems related to the limited capacity of our logistic systems to absorb an ongoing mobility. These capacity limits are inter alia reflected in trafftc congestion, environmental decay, resource depletion and lack of safety. In the past years an intensive debate has started on the question how to cape with the above mentioned negative extemalities of transport in a mobile society. The remedies proposed range from market-oriented mechanisms (such as road pricing or eco-taxes) to heavy investments in public transport, notably (light) railway systems and bus systems. A major question is of course that the critical mass of flows of passengers or goods is by far not sufficient to warrant a huge sum of public expenditures in public transport infrastructure. There are only practically two cases where public transport might offer an economically feasible solution, viz. point-to-point connections between large population (or activity) centres (e.g. Madrid-Seville, Paris-Lyon, or Milan-Rome) and