Focus of work
This fellowship will explores how persona-driven, people-centred approaches can
enhance bus planning and reduce car dependency in the UK, with a particular focus
on the West Midlands. While buses are central to delivering sustainable and inclusive mobility, current planning practices often rely on average user assumptions, overlooking the diverse needs and behaviours of different population groups.
To address this, this project will develop a persona-based evaluation framework that integrates Department for Transport (DfT) user personas with a synthetic population and agent-based modelling. This approach enables bus interventions to be assessed from the perspective of distinct user groups rather than an “average traveller”, capturing varied behavioural responses and spatial impacts across different communities.
A key contribution of this research is showing how persona-driven evidence can enable more targeted and inclusive transport planning, helping policymakers identify the most effective interventions for specific groups and locations, and ultimately improving the design and evaluation of public transport systems.
Impact
This study will have the potential to:
- Support a measurable reduction in car dependency by identifying targeted
bus interventions for different population groups. - Enable more inclusive and effective transport planning by moving beyond
average-based approaches. - Strengthen policy and investment decisions through robust, behaviourally
grounded evidence. - Contribute to the UK’s “Net Zero” goals by encouraging greater public transport use.