Future technology in public transportation : a qualitative study based on public transportation authorities attitudes

Abstract: The issue that this study addresses is the public transportations difficulty to adapt and keep up with the continuously digitizing society. To address this problem, the purpose of this study will be to investigate what could be a contribution to the further improvements within public transportation systems. The study is established alongside with the recently started “Welcome onboard” project, where the purpose is to develop and extend the public transportation as we know it today. The aim is to through five different functional areas urge the utility, where crowdsourcing will play a central role. We are distinguishing three public transport authorities attitudes towards the different functions of the project. We will investigate the attitudes towards the Welcome  onboardprojects functions and if they could be a contribution to the RKM-companies future development. Furthermore, this thesis will also investigate how the RKM-companies would grade the different advantages of different functional areas, and in a extend what would bevital for an future implementation. The empirical data collection consist of interviews of informants with a deep understanding ofthe development of the public transportations. First we interviewed two key persons of the Welcome onboard project, to get a deep understanding of the project. Later on we interviewed key persons at Värmlandstrafiken and Västtrafik, that are two different regional public transportation authorities. To strengthen our results we also chose to interview Samtrafiken, which task are to develop collaborations and offer services within information and ticket solutions for the public transport industry. This is made in order to benefit both traffic the RKM and the travelers.  All the interviews were transcribed and analyzed, later the empirical data collection could be compared through different cases. These cases were categorized by information about the company that the interviewees where representing and the answers regarding the attitudes towards the “Welcome onboard”-project and its functions. The result from the thesis will give an understanding of Västtrafik, Värmlandstrafiken and Samtrafikens perspective of the functions and attitudes towards the further development of public transportation.