Tinngo’s Greek Hub under Lever’s Development Consultants is organizing a focus group discussion with women users of private and public transport in Thessaloniki’s Metropolitan Area. Comfort and customer service as well as safety and security are the main components to be identified and the main topic of the discussion.
Lever, coordinator of the Greek Hub, designed the whole process including the selection of the travellers’ sample, the questions and the group discussion logistics. Indicative employees were chosen to give their point of view regarding their mobility habits and their overall experience as public transport users but also shed light on the experience that elderly women or women with children have, when they use public bus lines in Thessaloniki.
Six women agreed to participate in the focus group discussion, from whom half of them use their private vehicles for their typical weekday journeys and the other half use Thessaloniki’s public transport. Women shortly introduced themselves, explained why and when they need to travel in a typical weekday and why they choose this particular mode of transport.
The interviewees’ views seem to suggest that the situation in today’s status of Thessaloniki’s public transport is not sustainable given the fact that the bus routes have dramatically decreased over the last years while the demand remains the same. This situation is due to internal procedures of the Thessaloniki’s Urban Transport Organization which is in charge of Thessaloniki’s public bus routes. As the majority of women indicated:
The situation seems to get from bad to worse every day with the buses in Thessaloniki
I start from my home and no one knows what time I’ll manage to arrive at my work and vice versa
Today I could not get into the bus because it was too crowded and it was impossible for me to use it
