Between engineering and anthropology: Towards an integrated system of indicators on public transport and mobility

Designing and implementing a public transport system that enables equal access conditions to daily opportunities is a central challenge in our cities today. In this framework, a wide array of issues is incorporated, particularly a social dimension of transport policy and systems. The current work presents some ideas about the set-up of an information system which integrates different interests of various disciplines and allows analyzing the state of public transport and mobility, as important basis for decision making. After a critical review of existing information tools (such as origin-destination surveys o purely qualitative studies), further methods are introduced, for instance the so-called motility-surveys and the creation of indicators under support of geographic information systems. Thus, the challenge of this work refers to an in-depth reflection about what is needed for a comprehensive mobility information system, which integrates the different methods and tools of a central decision platform used by public transport planners and decision makers on local level.