Overview

The second meeting of the Public Transport Organisation & Policy working group was hosted by the Verband Region Stuttgart. The host of the meeting, Frank Zerban, provided some insights into the Greater Stuttgart region and its public transport system. The site visit showed the S-Bahn network, which is supervised by the Verband Region Stuttgart in its quality of public transport authority. With respect to the focus of the meeting, namely quality provisions in public transport contracts, special attention was given, during the visit, to the practical implementation of quality provisions (accessibility, information, cleanliness, support to passengers, etc.)

1. The Greater Stuttgart region and its public transport system

The Greater Stuttgart region is situated within the Land of Baden-Württemberg in the South-West of Germany. This polycentric region is made of five administrative districts (including the city of Stuttgart) which comprise over 140 cities and villages. It has a population of 2,4 million inhabitants.

The public transport system consists of three urban modes (bus, tramway and light rail), operated by SSB, and two regional modes (regional bus and suburban/regional railway). Regional buses are operated by 38 private companies, whereas suburban/regional railways are operated by S-Bahn Stuttgart, DB Regio, and WEG (Connex). The table below provides some information on public transport supply.

Regarding demand, the patterns of use of public transport vary across the region. While public transport represents 47% of the journeys made within the city of Stuttgart, the number is between 8 and 10% in the rest of the region, depending on the frequency of service in each area.

Commuting is significant in the Greater Stuttgart region. In fact, the average distance of a trip using public transport is 20 km, and almost 30% of all passengers are commuters. Most of these passengers use the S-Bahn network.
The supervision of public transport within the region is shared between various authorities:

- the Land of Baden-Württemberg, in charge of heavy rail;

- the Greater Stuttgart Region, responsible for suburban rail (S-Bahn) and selected regional trains;

- the City of Stuttgart, responsible for light rail, trams and city buses;

- the four other administrative districts, in charge of their regional buses;

- an integration company (VVS), managing the revenue sharing and informing passengers about timetables and fares.

The tarification is fully integrated within the region. Key features of the integrated fare system include a zone system for the determination of the ticket fare, a single ticket and a single fare for all modes. In addition, it is possible to make several transfers with one ticket and the fare does not depend on the number of transfers.

2. The S-Bahn network

The Verband Region Stuttgart is the authority supervising the suburban railway network of Stuttgart, operated by S-Bahn Stuttgart, which is a subsidiary of DB (German Rail).

The S-Bahn network consists of 6 lines, for a total route length of 248 km. The annual production is about 8.5 million train x km. The total annual cost of the S-Bahn network is about 140 million Euro and subsidies amount to about 50 million Euro.

The relationship between the Verband Region Stuttgart and S-Bahn Stuttgart is formalised by a contract. The current contract started on July 2003 and is planned to end by December 2013. This contract has contributed to reach and to maintain high levels of performance regarding service quality. The site visit along the S-Bahn network focused on the practical implementation of the quality provisions included in the contract.

Objective quality indicators including punctuality, cleanliness of trains, management of complaints, and functioning of the ticket machines, are set out in the contract, which specifies the thresholds for the grant of a bonus or a malus. Punctuality, for instance, is measured in real-time for every train at several stations, and compared against the criteria in the contract. No malus has to be paid if more than 90% (97,5%) of all trains within one month were running with less than 3 min (6 min) delay in peak time.

The contract also includes six subjective quality indicators, including the provision of information (cf. picture below), both in regular situation and in the case of delay, which are measured on a scale for 1 to 6. One example for improvement is the cleanliness, where the marks given by passengers improved from 3,0 to 2,88 between 2002 and 2004. Subjective quality measurement shows that it takes at least one year before improvements in quality are realized by the passengers.

The revenue of the penalties is used in the improvement of the service. For example, the network’s management centre, where originates all real-time passenger information, is partly funded by the revenues of the bonus/malus scheme. The group visited the network management centre, situated within Stuttgart’s main station (cf. picture below).