Introduction
A new mission for public transport: individual goals are changing into collective goals. Public transport now should have a role more geared (or at lease as much) to the satisfaction of collective awareness than to the direct individual needs of those who use it. Public transport benefits the quality of life in communities across the country by providing safe, efficient and economical transportation service. While public transportation benefits the people who use it, society in general benefits from its availability. Some of the most significant benefits are ease traffic congestion, improve air quality and reduce energy consumption. As the level of life increased, people begin to buy private cars and less use public transport, and the public transport users expect getting reliability and comfortable service, quantity and the standards of speed, less costs. For public transport operators, they face the problem that the increased private cars and the less public transport usage. How to solve this problem and increase public awareness to use public transport is the question that government has to solve it is we will discuss in the paper. Let us use SWOT analysis to analyze public transport’s advantage and disadvantage first.
Part 1. SWOT analysis of public transport
1.1 Strengths
1.1.1 the lower price and the larger capacity
Normally the lower charge is the main advantage of public transport. The price of bus is normally 0.1EUR per time in most china cities, and compared with the average monthly income350-400 EUR in the big cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, the price is very cheap. High capacity access open to everyone with little use of land and little environmental damage are the main justifications for public transport. In China, public transports have a large volume of passengers and a high load factor and overload factor. Based on the urban public transport statistics, the number of public who use the buses in Beijing is near 3.3 million per day.
1.1.2 environment preservation
Public also has an important role on ensuring of environmental safety, reducing pollution. Most rail vehicles and trolleybuses emit little or no pollution because they are electrically propelled. Most buses use clean diesel, such as natural gas, in order to reduce pollution. Public transportation reduces annual emissions for the pollutants that create smog, VOCs and NOx, by more than 70,000 tons and 27,000 tons respectively (Richard A. White, 2005)
1.1.3 congestion relief
As White Paper European transport policy for 2010: time to decide reported that cars numbers have trebled in the last 30 years and are rising by 3 million a year, the increased cars increase the congestion in the road even governments invest to improve the roads every year. Public transportation helps to ease the congestion on the urban increasingly crowded network of roadways. According to the 2004 Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) Annual Urban Mobility Report reported that regular bus and train services in America’s most congested cities saved drivers more than 1.1 billion hours in travel time in 2002(Richard A White, 2005). Beijing is the most congestion city in China with the number of cars exceeding 1.28 million, Traffic speed on some urban roads averaged 12km/h in 2003, compared to 20km/h in 1996, and 45km/h in 1994. In order to solve the congestion problem before 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing is using the mass rapid transit (MRT) mode as solution to attract more people to use public transport, as the mode designed, the standard bus lines will get the average speed of 20-25km/h, and one express line will reach 35km/h, the faster speed will attract more people use public transport (Wang Fengwu, 2004)
1.2 Weaknesses
1.2.1 public transport service is less comfortable than the usage of private cars
Public transport service is less comfortable compared with private car. Private cars have increasingly become extensions of home: radio, stereo CD players, telephone and a whole range of other home comforts are not matched by local public transport and cars have become easier and more comfortable to drive (Barry J.Simpson, 1994). The operating speed of public transport is low and breakdown rate high especially in developing countries. In China, buses speed in many cities are less than 10 kilometers per hour, and long waiting time for the next bus are common.
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