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User-centric accessibility of public transport in Finland
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School of Engineering |
Master's thesis
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en
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61
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Abstract
An accessible public transport supports sustainable and socially inclusive mobility, however accessibility is often evaluated through technical compliance rather than users’ experience. Though Finland has strong accessibility standards and relatively high-quality public transport infrastructure. The methods of capturing user-centric accessibility remain limited. This thesis examines user-centric accessibility in Finnish public transport by investigating how accessibility is currently evaluated by public transport authorities (PTAs) and how accessibility barriers are experienced across different stages of a journey.
The study uses a sequential mixed- methods design. Initially, five semi-structured expert interviews with professionals involved in public transport accessibility planning and evaluation were conducted and analysed using thematic coding in ATLAS.ti. The findings were organised across five journey stages which are trip planning, station access, vehicle boarding, transfers and ride quality. The results indicate that usability of digital trip-planning tools, pathway conditions and barriers to station access, reliance on driver assistance during boarding, uncertainty due to real-time information gaps during transfers and limited seating availability and on-board information during travel are factors shaping user-centric accessibility. Experts reported that current evaluation practices rely mainly on user testing at service introduction and periodic infrastructure audits but lack continuous systematic user feedback.
Based on these findings, the thesis develops a journey based user-centric accessibil-ity survey model to support PTAs in collecting structured user experience data and complementing technical assessments.
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Supervisor
Mladenovic, MilosThesis advisor
Saarinen, TainaStrommer, Hanna