International train travel could serve as a more sustainable alternative to flying, especially for short distance journeys up to 750 km. Though both forms of transport have negative impacts, the environmental costs of travelling by train are significantly lower than travelling by plane (European Environmental Agency, 2021). Therefore, the European Union, governments, environmentalists and railway companies see great value in promoting train travel over flying for short distance journeys (Ministry of IenW, 2022).

In order to further promote this transition, a couple of action points have been identified by Donners (2018) to improve international train travel, ticketing being one of them. Unlike booking a flight ticket - which can be done within just a few clicks - finding, comparing, and booking a train ticket has proven to be a more challenging task. Recent research conducted by the University of St. Pölten in Austria (Preslmayr, 2022) revealed that one third of travellers are unable to complete their booking, highlighting the difficulty of this process. In order to promote the transition from air to rail for short distance journeys, the bookability of international train tickets in Europe needs to be improved.

It is difficult to change a complex system such as the international railway industry, but we can help travellers navigate it. This project aims to do that by redesigning a booking platform and app that support holiday travellers when booking and potentially rescheduling their international train journey in Europe with an intuitive booking process that provides clarity and guidance at every step leaving them feeling confident and excited about their journey.

An iterative design process led to the final design proposal. Created to be intuitive, supportive, adaptive and exciting, this redesign booking platform aims to ensure that every traveller, regardless of their prior travel experience, can easily book a suitable train ticket, leaving them feeling confident and excited about their journey ahead. The booking platform was designed to align with the user needs and decision making patterns. Core features to support this include route characteristics, transfer alternatives and search filters. A travel app was redesigned to complement the booking platform, creating a bridge between the booking process and the train journey. In case disruption does occur, the travellers are supported by the travel app that provides clear guidance for how they can continue their journey.

The user evaluation of the final design proposal shows promising results with an excellent score on its usability according to the adjective rating scale of Bangor et al. (2009) and positive responses from participants. To facilitate this redesigned user journey, some supportive processes need to be improved, including open communication and collaboration between carrier and ticket distributors, updated route information database and an EU wide disruption protocol.

All in all, it is difficult to change a large complex system such as the international train industry, but we can help travellers navigate it. While the railway system is expected to evolve, impactful changes may take time. Meanwhile, optimising services through redesigns can have a significant immediate effect on the travellers experience and provide access to a sizable potential customer segment. Therefore, further exploring and implementing the designs as proposed in this report will improve the bookability of international train tickets in Europe.

Night trains benefit society in multiple ways. They are environmentally friendly, improve the accessibility of regions and are space-effective. Understanding traveller's preferences enables night train operators to improve night train services and harness societal benefits better. This study conducted a stated preference survey with 1031 respondents from the Netherlands to dive deeper into the importance of operational factors like booking convenience, travel costs, long travel times of up to 18 hours and accommodations. Additionally, factors that make up a convenient booking scenario were revealed. Lastly, a latent class choice model (LCCM) was applied to derive insights into heterogeneity and to determine to which extent personal factors influence class membership. Results reveal that for a convenient booking scenario, being able to book one ticket and comparing travel options are most important. However, booking convenience only plays a minor role in determining night train mode choice. Travel costs and accommodation are significantly more important. Several classes have been revealed: Environmentally conscious comfort lovers make up 13% of the respondents, experienced night train travellers 29\%, cost-sensitive travellers 37% and flight lovers 20%. Applying a scenario analysis, night train market shares vary from 20% to 71%, with significant heterogeneity among respondents. For practitioners, this implies focusing mainly on prices and accommodation while taking the significantly different preferences of the population into consideration.

This project explores the prospects for interior design in a dual purpose train that can run both day and night for improved utilization and comfort.

Contemporary trains are categorized as either exclusively for daytime or nighttime use. Their interiors limit them to specific temporal contexts. For instance, in daytime trains, passengers are confined to sitting positions and cannot lie flat, resulting in suboptimal sleeping comfort. Thereby the appeal of such trains for night (long distance) travel is reduced. Conversely, in existing night trains, while passengers can lie flat, the fixed layout featuring compartments and beds makes the capacity of the train too low for daytime use. Moreover, night trains face strong competition from aviation, rendering their utilization challenging.

A solution to this problem involves designing a train interior that serves the dual purpose of accommodating both daytime and nighttime travel. Drawing insights from research, and the existing coach geometry, four distinct design directions were developed. Emphasis was placed on striking a balance between coach capacity and passenger comfort, recognizing the inherent tension between these two factors in this context. One of these directions was further refined into the final concept. In refining the final concept, the emphasis was on creating a passenger experience characterised by privacy, safety and comfort. Two Virtual Reality tests were conducted among other efforts to achieve this goal.

The final concept features a symmetrical coach with a centrally positioned entrance. The entrance aligns with the platform's height, facilitating easy boarding for passengers
with reduced mobility. The central hall houses a self-service bar for acquiring food and beverages. Adjacent to the central hall are seats on both sides. During the day, passengers can occupy these seats, which are configured in sets of two facing each other. No ticket reservation is necessary for daytime travel, and the coach accommodates 72 passengers during this period. Capacity is thereby 10% lower than in daytime-only trains. At night, the seats transform into beds, offering passengers the option to lie flat.
Privacy screens can be easily placed around the bed, and overhead lockers are available for secure luggage storage. The nighttime capacity is 36 passengers, which is the same capacity as the sleeper accommodation in night trains. Ticket reservation is obligatory for overnight travel. The coach incorporates two toilets and two washrooms. Distinct zones within the coach, such as a quiet zone, a socializing zone, and a women only zone for nighttime travel, contribute to a tailored and comfortable passenger experience.

COVID-19 had (and still has) a huge impact on travel behaviour. Most research on the effects of COVID-19 on travel behaviour is based on daily travel behaviour. Long-distance travel is most of the time not included. Therefore, this paper studies the impact of perceived COVID-19 risk on mode-choice for long-distance travel in Europe. This paper uses a Stated-Preference approach which consists of two parts, the perceived risk rating experiment and the main mode choice experiment. In total
1147 responses were collected. In the rating experiment, respondents rated their perceived risk based on eight attributes. In the main choice experiment, respondents chose between train, plane and care based on travel time, travel cost, travel comfort and perceived risk. With this,
the Value of Risk (VoR) for a decrease in perceived risk is derived, both expressed in travel cost and travel comfort. Moreover, the Willingness to Pay (WtP) for comfort and Value of Time (VoT) are derived. With the combination of both models, the WtP for risk attributes given a perceived risk level is derived. The combination of both models shows the Willingness to Pay values for the different risk attributes, given a certain perceived risk level. To test the influence of perceived risk on modal split, three routes with real-world values are used. The results implicate a maximum of 5% market share difference possible. This shows that perceived COVID-19 has a moderate effect on modal split.

Limiting climate change forces us to switch to a more sustainable mobility. Travelling by train is more sustainable. Night trains might be a solution, they over several advantages such as a higher comfort level and can travel long-distances during the night. However, there currently is no knowledge about the Willingness to Use night trains. This study is the first into this Willingness to Use night trains, as an alternative for flying, for long-distance European travel. To do so, this paper makes use of two Stated-Preference experiments. A comfort rating experiment, in which the comfort rating is the dependent variable. In this experiment, it is explored to which extent night train characteristics influence the ’perceived comfort’ rating. In the mode choice experiment, it is in turn investigated how this comfort rating is traded-off against more traditional mode choice attributes such as trip time and trip costs. The study presents the results of linear regression and a Panel Mixed Logit model, estimated on 804 collected responses in the Netherlands. The results of both models are combined to derive Willingness-to-Pay values for an improvement in one of the comfort attributes, given an initial comfort level. Furthermore, several segments were identified using a latent class choice model. At last, the Willingness to Use the night train is explored for several scenarios. It is shown that when the night train is introduced as-is, it is predicted to have a market share of about 60%. Positioning the night train as a low-cost competitor results in a significant drop in market share.

The aim of this thesis is to gain insights into the impact that various variables have on the topological evolution of a public transit network in a polycentric urban region. These variables are: the spatial structure of the polycentric urban region, the demand distribution, the operational costs and multimodality versus unimodality. To gain these insights, a network evolution model is developed that incorporates these four variables. This network evolution model is then also applied to the Randstad public transit network to gain insights into potential improvements that can be made in this network and also to test the applicability of the model to a public transit network in practice.

The discussion involving BRT and LRT is well alive among policymakers, who often rely on personal preferences or, as it is called in literature, on “blind commitment” towards one system or the other for their decision-making. The reason for choosing a system according to personal taste is also caused by the unknown preferences that public transport users have for the two systems. It is known from literature that there exists a “rail bonus”, but it is not clear to what extent this applies to LRT compared to BRT. Moreover, it is not known what are the causes behind the rail bonus black-box. This study wants to put some light on the dilemma by testing the existence of an “LRT bonus” and trying to explain it by analysing perceptions and how these relate to each other. Moreover, the study tries to understand how policymakers perceive BRT and LRT and how the decision-making should be done.