Влияние электронного участия на повышение привлекательности общественного транспорта (на примере Санкт-Петербурга)

People in different countries and on different continents are rushing to cities increasingly in search of jobs and opportunities for the future. According to United Nations estimates, the daily growth of the world urban population is about 200 000 people (UN, 2017). Today, half of the world population, that is a approximately 3.5 billion people, lives in cities and urban agglomerations. IBM forecasts that this number increases to 6.5 billions by 2050 (IBM, 2016).
Such rapid urbanization leads to a tremendous strain on the transport infrastructure. The ever increasing traffic has exceeded the capacity of city roads that leads to congestion, the increase of travel time, amount of consumed fuel, and emissions polluting the environment.
Most of city planners and researchers see the solution to traffic problems in the development of public transport (Herzog, at al, 2018; Villani, 2010; Brezina at al, 2019). Modern public transport must become more attractive for city residents in comparison to private cars. At present time, one of the dominant approaches, that tries to achieve this goal, is the use of digital technologies in transport infrastructure (Zawieskaa, Pieriegudb, 2018). A variety of technological means such as sensors, geolocation systems, ticket validators and etc., provide better control over the transport flows and allow to collect big amount of data to improve the network of public transport. Theoretical framework that studies the application of ICT to urban mobility is a “smart transport” concept.
The “smart transport” concept is highly techno-centric because it focuses only on a technical domain of “smartness” (Giuffrè, Di-Dio, 2017) while “smartness” in the urban context means not only filled with modern technologies but also the development of human capital and communication between stockholders. The review of existing smart transport solutions also showed that there are no special ICT-based solutions on the current market that would provide communication between passengers and public transport provider.
Citizen participation is considered to be a crucially important factor of development more sustainable society, since it gives an access to more information that can be used by authorities to make more accurate decisions (Council of Europe, 2009). This statement is also relevant for the development of urban mobility. Modern city transport systems are characterized by their complexity, and the governance of complex systems requires the establishment of multiple feedback and self-regulation mechanisms, that can be provided by participation tools.
Thus, it is reasonable to ask if the communication domain of “smartness” should become a part of the “smart transport” concept to increase the attractiveness of public transport. In other words, if city residents are provided with opportunity to e-participate (which means to complain or comment on the work of public transport online as well as to share and vote for ideas about its
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development), would it influence their transport behavior, making them to choose public transport instead of private cars? The answer to this question gives city authorities possibility to define whether it is worth to spend money on introduction of e-participation in public transport sphere or not. Therefore, the goal of the current research is to determine whether the possibility of e- participation increases the attractiveness of public transport for city residents.
To get the full answer to the research question, several sub-questions should be researched:
• Do citizens want to e-participate in the development of urban mobility?
• If they want, what degree of participation do they prefer and what is the most
preferred e-participation channel for them?
Serving the goal, the research sets the following objectives:
1. To identify citizen e-participation and highlight its levels;
2. To study e-participation in the transport context;
3. To find the main features of “smart public transport”;
4. To study the best practices in the current market of smart public transport solutions;
5. To develop questionnaire for survey-based experiment to find if e-participation
increases the attractiveness of public transport;
6. To determine the readiness of citizens to e-participate and the most preferred e-
participation channel for them;
7. To develop logit regression model to find what socio-demographic characteristics
affect the readiness of citizens to e-participate;
Hence, the object of the research is citizen e-participation, whereas the subject is the role
of e-participation in public transport choice.
To test the hypothesis if opportunity of e-participation increases the attractiveness of public
transport, method of survey-based experiment was used. This method is becoming an increasingly widely used in such science as: sociology, psychology, management, economics, public police, law, etc. The full description of the method and the reasons for its use are provided in the first part of the second chapter. The method of logit regression was also used in the paper to define which socio-demographic characteristics of respondents influence on their readiness to e-participate.
The experiment was conducted in Saint Petersburg because of two reason: the first one, the city experiences the problems with transport traffic (hence, it crucially important to encourage people to use public transport), the second one, the government of the city plans a transport reform (the findings of the research potentially may be used for the reform). According to the reform plan, the city administration does not plan to develop e-participation tools. If the results of the study show that e-participation increases the attractiveness of public transport, then the city authorities should add this item to the reform agenda.
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The novelty of the paper is that currently there are no any theoretical or empirical researches about the role of e-participation in public transport choice. The result of the research will cover this gap and also provide practical recommendations for city authorities to improve the attractiveness of public transport