Definition of passenger user groups with Ward's method for the evaluation of journey planners

Abstract

A quantitative analysis was performed to evaluate multimodal journey planners, and for this purpose a framework of aspects was developed and user groups were created, so that all the different needs and expectations could be represented. In order to gain realistic answers from the user groups a survey – based on the aspects – was composed. Using the answers and the aggregated data, the evaluation can be validated. Based on the results it can be stated that the original user groups are not significantly different from each other. Therefore new user groups were defined using Ward’s method. The answers were analyzed and the features of these new user groups were defined. Using this new assignment, the journey planners were re‐evaluated and the ranking was compared to the original results. Furthermore the correlation between certain answers was explored, which results can help in the understanding of common needs of passengers.