Why is public transport so uncomfortable? Is it possible to change with Service Design?

Since half a year back I have had the fortune to discover my local public transport. In my 14 years in the city I’ve always commuted by bike. Blizzard or rain, snow or scorching summer heat (not that common perhaps), but still, I always made my way riding a bicycle. Last year we moved out of the city core and now the possibility of always taking the bike seemed harder. My 2-year old daughter also made things a bit more complicated.

I can summarize my 6 months of going on the bus as follows: why does it have to be so uncomfortable? I can understand that the busses shuts down in bad weather, I can understand and accept the busses being late sometimes. I can understand and learn how to buy my ticket or monthly travel pass, no matter interface or touchpoint. But I can not understand why the bus ride have to be so uncomfortable?

Why are the public transport company not prioritizing what pretty much all the rest of the transport business talks about? Look at the cars, look at the airtravel, look at the long distance trains. All of them are attracting customers with the comfort.

Maybe you recognize your self sweating through a 10-minute bus ride because the driver of the bus decided it’s time to juice up the heat even though it is barely autumn. Or perhaps that time the driver forgot to turn on the heat even though it’s freezing cold in the middle of winter. Some of the drivers are on the skilled level of a 12 year old when they hit that brake over and over again, making you fall over some poor old lady who just wants to get home, alive. Another time the bus is so full of people you can barely squeeze yourself in, and when you ask the driver if he or she knows about any other bus coming behind, they look at you as if you asked them for some more salt and bread rolls. Repeatedly the drivers seem to lack information, on traffic situations, on schedule issues, on anything related to the main business of the company they work for: transporting people.

Getting correct information is one of the biggest stakeholder for comfort. Without the information, you are left unknowing and therefore quite uncomfortable.

How many times have you been welcomed on to the bus with a smile? It happened to me once and that was magic. Imagine how easy it would be to get more people riding the bus to feel the same? Perhaps we could live with all that other stuff..

In my line of work I aim at changing stuff for the better. I always start with the people. The people driving the busses, the people riding the bus, the people telling the people who drives the busses what to do, and so on. I would put some time and effort in to understanding the needs of all those people and then I would use Service Design tools for changing the situation for the better. I would try to find out if the comfort is that important as I am making out here and I would act on that. The definition of comfort would probably have to be debated and analyzed. But I am still quite certain comfort is a bigger deal than a new app for buying tickets, for the customers, the people riding the bus everyday.

I also think that you could do a lot without having to set up a new digital platform or developing a new app. The issues lay in the culture of the public transport company and the way they look at their customers, thats where I would begin.

Would you agree? How is the public transport were you live? What is more important — digital solutions or comfort? Is it unfair to put them against each other?