Residents have a lot to contribute to public transport planning

HSL wants to have residents more involved in the preparation of
route network plans. Resident interaction provides new ideas and
local knowledge not available from the statistics.

“By listening to passengers, we can better understand people’s
travel needs. Statistics provide us with basic information about
how the masses travel, interactions helps us to interpret the
numbers. So we need both high-quality statistical data and dialogue
with residents in order to plan good public transport service,”
says HSL’s public transport planner Nina Frösén.

HSL has prepared an interaction model which is applied to route
network plans at major region level.  The basic idea is that
interaction continues throughout the entire planning project from
the start to the completion of the plan. This approach was applied,
for example, on the route network planning in Vantaa and the
experiences were very positive. 

For example, residents could participate in the preparation of
the route network plan for Korso-Koivukylä on a blog. The blog
attracted some 10,000 visits in a few months. In future, the
interaction forums will increasingly be made available online, and
in the long run the traditional forms of participation such as
printed feedback forms and residents' meetings will go down in
history.

Successful interaction requires that residents, businesses and
organizations are informed about what is going on in all stages of
the planning process. As the planning proceeds, HSL can also ask
comments, for example, on specific individual solutions. 

At draft stage, residents can discuss the draft with planners
either online or face to face in residents' meetings. Finally, all
feedback and comments are summarized and the most frequently asked
questions are answered in an open forum.

“It is also important to give people reasons for why one idea is
adopted and another is not. When the entire planning process is
open, it is easier for people to understand and accept the
outcome,” emphasizes Nina Frösén.