Understanding community information needs around public transport in South East Queensland, Australia

The challenge

Public transport within South East Queensland (SEQ) is undergoing substantial transformation that will introduce new infrastructure and service changes. Over the next five years, public transport developments such as the Cross River Rail, Brisbane Metro, Gold Coast Light Rail Stage Three and bus network upgrades will be introduced.

A growing population in Brisbane and the upcoming 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games will place increasing demands on public transport.

Therefore, these projects aim to ease this increasing pressure and allow the public transport system to run efficiently and grow with the city. Additionally, Translink needed to balance the expectations and requirements from stakeholders with customer experience to significantly improve the legibility of their customer facing information products.

Verian’s expertise in formative and evaluative research were used to better understand the community needs around public transport, information needs and barriers across a range of audiences.

What we did

In 2022, Verian was commissioned by Translink to review the legibility of new network map concepts.

• The objective of this phase was to ascertain current information needs, the current extent of network legibility and their comprehension of a series of draft network map concepts.
• Qualitative research was conducted through an Online Bulletin Board and in-depth interviews with key audiences including current public transport users in SEQ, infrequent public transport users and interstate public transport users.
• In depth interviews were also conducted with public transport users who have an accessibility need (e.g. vision, cognitive and physical impairments) to test legibility of the network map for all users.

In 2024, Verian continued this work by testing the refined network map concepts and deciding on a final design for public distribution.

• This round of research tested the concepts look and feel, legibility and ease of use to ensure the final design was fit for purpose and visually appealing.
• The key objective of this phase was to identify any red flags in terms of legibility, information gaps for users and how effectively users can navigate the network and plan their journey using the map.
• In this phase, we tested the full suite of information products including a revised network map, line diagrams and frequency tables.

• This phase incorporated qualitative methods consistent with the 2022 research (Online Bulletin Board and in depth interviews) followed by a quantitative approach (online survey and F2F Intercept interviews).
• The initial qualitative phase sought to validate and refine key elements of the network map.

The quantitative phase aimed to evaluate the network map on a larger scale (with n=1,000 public transport users) against key criteria including legibility, visual appeal and ease of use to determine the best option for the public transport network.

Impact

Our work informed a comprehensive review of existing information products to improve accessibility of the public transport network in SEQ. By elevating the community voice, this research has helped prepare the public transport network in SEQ for growth and change over the coming years.