The POLITE project partners have identified 31 EU proven good practices in public transport information systems for exchange coming both from the consortium and from external non-project sites. The project partners have been busy the past months with meetings, interviews and site visits to the non-project sites in order to select the ones that would best match the needs and interests of the project partners. A number of good practices have been identified in the UK, Italy, Czech Republic, Spain, Latvia, Poland, Belgium, Denmark. The good practices identified go even beyond the borders of the EU countries to Switzerland, Croatia and Serbia.
The Good Practice Round Table held in Reading on 14-16 May, was a milestone in the project as the partners performed a good practice analysis in order to identify those good practices which best meet their policy requirements. Two methods were used to define the good practices to be used in POLITE. On the one hand, a methodology proposed by LaTDEA according to which each best practice is defined into one of 5 key areas: Public Transport and/or Multimodal Information Systems; Public Transport Fleet Management Systems; Public Transport Interchanges; Public Transport Payment Systems; and Public Transport Priority Systems. On the other hand, an initial prioritizing of the Good Practices was done by the partners. After the final analysis of this information, a report will be produced including a collection of the good practices. The list of good practices will also be made available on the POLITE website.
A site visit in Reading, who is leading the component on exchange of experiences, also took place. It covered three main areas: the public transport priority, access controls and enforcement; the station redevelopment and interchange design; and Reading traffic control centre.