Bylinjen – a holistic public transport service
Kolumbus AS
Designing the vision for a sustainable, accessible, and seamless passenger experience
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Our client Kolumbus, a mobility provider in Rogaland, operates the public bus and boat routes in Stavanger. They have as a goal to connect boats, busses, trains, and city bikes so that people can get from A to Z without using a car. As a step towards this goal, they're working on a new bus route concept – Bylinjen, together with the county municipality of Rogaland. We have contributed to the project with a complete design concept, including design of the bus stops, bus exteriors, and interiors.
Rogaland Fylkeskommune (county municipality) and Kolumbus are together developing a new transport concept in the Stavanger region – Bylinjen, where the county municipality is responsible for the infrastructure (the busway with bus stops), and Kolumbus for the service itself. The new concept will offer the passengers a high-quality, integrated, and seamless mobility service and improve accessibility in the Stavanger region. With more frequent departures and more stops, the new route will give a differentiated service.
The Bylinjen concept has received an excellent, well thought-through design that we can be proud of. It adds up nicely to our existing portfolio.Anna Sandvik Hauge, Marketing Manager, Kolumbus
A concrete and holistic design concept
An important part of the new bus service is the new bus stops. For the passenger experience to be complete and seamless, all the pieces must fit well together –from shelter to seat. Hence, we have focused on a holistic design concept, comprising both design guidelines for the bus stops and bus exterior and interior. This concept is intended as a visual and concrete guiding star that will support the county municipality and Kolumbus in designing and developing the physical bus shelters and busses in cooperation with the selected providers.
Using storytelling to clarify goals and ownership
For service to provide a good experience, it needs to be holistic and provide the users with everything they need. This is always a challenge, especially when the service is delivered by several providers together. It's essential to clarify each party's roles and ownerships to ensure that the result is seamless, which is what we did with Kolumbus and the Rogaland county municipality. By designing and visualizing the service's complete concept, we could together develop storytelling that makes sense to all stakeholders and generate a stronger sense of ownership from the respective parts.
Appealing and easy to use
The new bus service aims to provide a sustainable, accessible and appealing way of using public transport. Passengers should feel that it’s an easy and pleasant experience to use the new service and that they're proud to use the service. Ultimately, the goal is to make people take the bus more often – instead of using their car. To understand better what it takes to make passengers feel this way, we had previously gathered extensive user insight and applied this knowledge to the design concept.
