A comparison of the quality of the journey experience for travellers with mobility impairments

The FP7 project, METPEX, aimed to develop a standardised Pan European tool to measure the quality of multimodal whole journey experiences, from origin to destination. Mindful of the need to develop a set of inclusive measurement instruments, a suite of tools was developed (including a gaming app, satnav and on line systems, as well as paper based and focus group protocols), some of which were more appropriate to different journey types and user groups than others. The instruments were designed to collected information in a standardised way across Europe for ease of comparison . During autumn 2014, the tools were piloted in UK, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Greece, Romania, Spain, and Sweden, leading to over 5000 responses. This paper describes the development of the tools and looks at a subset of the results to assess the best way of measuring the experience of mobility impaired and other disadvantaged groups to understand how the transport experience of these groups varies across Europe. Results illustrate the differences in the experiences across Europe of those with reduced mobility, across different phases transport modes. Discussion is centred around the continued need to measure the experience of vulnerable travellers.