During the first phase of the CIPTEC project, an analysis of current market and social trends that might influence public transport within the next years has been conducted. CIPTEC investigated the specific needs of users and potential users of Public Transport systems. This analysis was performed by means of a rigorous and in-depth review of the literature on different types of Public Transport customers groups and their needs. A large number of interviews was conducted with representatives of Authorities and Operators, as well as with experts (mainly, but not exclusively with a transport related background). Another important research was the mapping and profiling of urban public transport supply. With the aid of an extensive survey, needs of public transport bodies were mapped. The first phase ended with the recording and evaluation of existing innovative services, coming not only from the public transport sector, but also from other transport and business sectors.
The main goal of the second phase was the development of innovative concepts in the public transport sector by means of collective intelligence, such as crowdsourcing campaigns and co-creation workshops, as well as the implementation of advanced marketing research methods. An extensive review of the collective innovation methods was carried out. After that, a crowdsourcing platform was developed, in order to enable the collection of new and innovative ideas. Moreover, two co-creation workshops and one crowdsourcing campaign were organised in four preselected European urban areas, with different business contexts. A wider crowdsourcing campaign has also been launched at a European level. For exploitation and sustainability purposes, the crowdsourcing platform has been released as open source. A website dedicated to the exploitation of the platform and to the offering of services related to crowdsourcing has been developed. The concepts derived have been (i) quantitatively and (ii) qualitatively (evaluation workshop with experts) evaluated. The second phase was concluded with the advanced marketing research methods that were used for ranking the innovations and identifying hidden groups of PT users. Additionally, behavioural insights have been tested both in lab and field environment, by taking into account the fact that preferences and attitudes can often be poor predictors of behaviour. In short, CIPTEC tested the potential of social labelling to increase people’s actual use of the bus in two areas (Rotterdam and Siena).
During the third phase of the project, the Toolbox for Public Transport Innovation has been designed and the potential of social entrepreneurship in the Public Transport sector was investigated through special workshops with experts on the field. The CIPTEC Toolbox is a tool that acts as the “synthesis” for the whole project. It includes the most important innovative concepts and the Innovation Flow which introduces all methodologies that were used in the project. Toolbox was tested by preparing three “model” strategy plans for innovation introduction and implementation. Furthermore, CIPTEC explored the potential of filling in the gap among supply and demand by activating the group of social entrepreneurs and innovators by implementing four participatory workshops at local level and one at European level. The third phase of CIPTEC was concluded with the preparation of comprehensive policy recommendations.
