Evaluation of innovative ideas for Public Transport proposed by citizens using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA)

Introduction: The use of participatory techniques in the field of transport is coming to the forefront recently. In this frame, eight co-creation workshops and five online crowdsourcing campaigns took place in Thessaloniki, Southern Tuscany, Rotterdam/The Hague, and Frankfurt, from which many innovative ideas to enhance Public Transport were generated by citizens. Purpose: A simple list of innovations would not be very useful for Public Transport Operators, as they cannot implement all of them at once. There was an obvious need for their ranking and this is the purpose of this paper. Methods: The ranking was realized with the most used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis method in transportation research, i.e. the Analytic Hierarchy Process, using three criteria: Feasibility, Utility, and Innovativeness. An online questionnaire was distributed to experts, using a modified snowball sampling technique, which yielded 97 completed questionnaires. Results: Utility (42.90%) was found to be the most important criterion, followed by Feasibility (40.10%), and Innovativeness (17.00%). Four lists of innovations were derived, ranked with respect to a) all three examined criteria, b) Feasibility, c) Utility, and d) Innovativeness. The highest ranked innovation for a) and c) was found to be Mobility as a Service and platform with real-time travel, comfort, and multi-modal information; for b) City marketing from a Public Transport perspective; and for d) Advanced e-ticketing system. Conclusion: The results revealed which of the innovations are the most promising and provide valuable insight into how to integrate innovation with Public Transport to make it more attractive. Public Transport Operators may use the results according to the peculiarities of their city and the importance they give to Feasibility, Utility, and Innovativeness.