A Service Design Case Study - Improving the Customer Experience of Bus Passengers

As a recent Service Design graduate student and bus operator looking for a new role, I decided to look into ways I could possibly improve the customer experience of bus passengers. For the last few months I have been running my own Service Design project focusing on public transport on the northern beaches during the pandemic and into the future. It was my intention to run this project for a longer period of time, but as the effects of the pandemic seem to be lessening and more people are starting to return to public transport, I will put forward what I have now.

Introduction

Due to covid, the bus service on the northern beaches has effectively been rendered useless to the vast majority of peak time passengers. Whether it be due to work from home requirements, public transport covid restrictions, or fear of travelling in confined spaces during a pandemic, the numbers of passengers has drastically fallen. This has had flow on effects across the whole service, for example; drivers have had to drive at frustratingly slow speeds (frustrating both drivers and passengers alike) to keep to pre covid timetables, otherwise risking running early and having passengers miss their service. There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest that the above covid restrictions have forced people travelling to the CBD and other major hubs into using their own cars to get to and from. This could have a range of effects from traffic delays to higher pollution and climate change, as well as effects on mental health.

My Brief

To create a more customer-centred bus network to safely transport increasingly larger numbers of passengers to and from major centres during and post pandemic, during peak times.

Scope

Due to limited resources, not all customer types were included in this project. I chose to focus on a very high level view of the journey of one type of customer, who used the service daily to get to work in the CBD from the Northern Beaches and then back home again, during the morning and afternoon peak. Further research is necessary to determine if this project could apply to other customer types.

Key Challenges

• Limited resources available. I was only able to use the free resources I could find online
• Limited interviews, as I felt it would have been inappropriate to be asking questions of passengers without the backing of STA or TfNSW.
• My Service Design inexperience

Research

I used 2 methods to collect data for this project, both were in relation to the current state. The first was “foundational”, which was completed by searching online for other similar projects — quite a bit of research has already been completed with many case studies on public transport. I was able to utilise some of this and adapt it to suit my needs. The second method was “Qualitative”, which involved what you could loosely call interviewing friends and family to obtain enough data to create a persona and journey map. I also called upon my own experience both from a Bus Operator’s point of view and from living and visiting other cities and using their transport networks. I was able to relate that experience to other observations found throughout the research.

Key Insights

Synthesis of the data captured during my research meant I was able to develop some key insights. Some of these insights were directly attributable to Covid, but could still be valid post pandemic.

1. The service needs to be uncrowded in order to ensure the lowest possible risk of passing on sickness
2. The journey needs to be as fast as possible in order to minimise time spent of the bus
3. The Driver needs to be on time and pleasant, but not over the top wanting to chat to everyone who gets on.
4. None of the above insights are new, but they are still key insights.

Observations of Key Insights

First of all, please remember that the scope of this project is very high level. I never expected to find the secret to the perfect bus service, but I did expect to come away with more detail than I did. With that said, I found it interesting that despite the insights being fairly simple and very likely already well known to TfNSW, they are still relevant insights that have come from customers. To me this suggests that these areas still need to be worked on so as to create a better customer experience.

Co-Design

Ideally, I would have liked to have facilitated a workshop with a large group of customers to brainstorm ideas, but as with the rest of this project, limited resources and time meant that co-design was left to my partner and myself. If selected, I would suggest this idea be further workshopped and developed.

The Idea

To get as many buses and customers moving through the Northern Beaches corridor as possible. To entice passengers back to safely using buses as their preferred mode of transport now, and in the post covid future by providing fast and comfortable journeys to and from major centres.

Key Takeaways

• Loop buses running through suburb routes at close intervals (only 1 or 2mins apart)
• Inter-hub buses that make less stops en route to final destination
• With more buses on the road, timetables are replaced by suggested running times
• Passengers shouldn’t be waiting in queues or on overcrowded buses
• More of the inter-hub buses would start from different hubs

Overview

During the morning and afternoon peaks (6am-10am & 3pm-7pm), buses could travel in a constant loop through suburbs to and from area hubs. These buses should only be a matter of minutes apart and timed so that they meet at the area hubs simultaneously to inter-hub service. These should run for the entirety of the peak. This would ensure all passengers can be quickly and safely picked up and dropped off to area hubs.

From these area hubs, a service would run to major centres like the CBD, North Sydney or Chatswood via the most direct route. These would also be in a constant loop so as to always have a resupply of buses for the next trip.

The inter-hub services would be similar to the B-line and 154X services we have running now. The major difference being that they would have less stops along the route. This could be achieved in 2 ways: 1. Having more buses starting from the different hubs 2. Some of the inter-hub buses would stop at all hubs (like the B-line does now), some would stop at only 1 or 2 hubs and some would be nonstop all the way to the major centre. This would be the same from all the different hubs. The challenge here is to have enough buses running to avoid overcrowding or standing in queues.

Ideally, buses running during covid would be so frequent that they are almost empty. People should see empty buses passing them while sitting in traffic. If this happens enough, it will entice them back. Post covid there would be enough buses running that capacities would be at manageable levels, and not overcrowded.

DVF

Desirable: Yes, more buses and faster trips are definitely desirable.

Feasible: Yes, there would be a need for further investment into infrastructure and an increase in the fleet size.

Viable: My understanding is that the current system works by paying contractors on a per-kilometer-travelled basis. With the coming privatisation of the last remaining government run depots, I would imagine a new system where more kilometers could be travelled within the same peak time frame, would be very appealing.