Better understanding of urban travelers is necessary, as sustainable development is becoming an integral part of transportation policy and practice. A volume of research shows people’s expressed willingness to adopt more sustainable urban travel behaviours, but a general sense of resistance to change is often encountered. Current methods in transportation research are not able to fully grasp on individual motivations such as discontent with public transport. This gap of knowledge in qualitative transportation research calls for the development of new methods. James Scott’s concept of the hidden transcript allows for the assumption that there are expressions of dissatisfaction towards public transportation at grassroots level. In order to access hidden transcripts on public transportation in Stockholm there is a need for a new method, which is developed in this thesis. The proposed visual mixed method draws from principles of visual ethnography, virtual ethnography, nethnography and social media research. The methodology is then tested and assessed as a platform to give voice to hidden transcripts on public transportation. The choice of method for developing the method is meta-methodology. The discussion sheds light on the potential of the framework (1) to grant access to hidden transcripts; (2) to fill a knowledge gap in transportation qualitative research; (3) to assist planners towards sustainable development of urban transportation.

Background: Policy initiatives to promote sustainable travel through the use of Internet based public information systems have increased during the last decade. Stockholm, in being one of the first cities in Europe to implement an Internet based service for facilitating sustainable travel is believed to be a good candidate for an analysis of key issues for developing sustainable travel planning services to the public. Aim: This thesis investigates the past development of two Stockholm based public information systems and their services in order to draw lessons on how to better provide for a public information service geared towards facilitating  environmentally sustainable travel planning through information and communications technology. The overall goal of the thesis is to contribute to an understanding on how to better design and manage current and future attempts at facilitating sustainable travel planning services based on historical case studies. Approach: The thesis draws ideas from the concept of organizational responsiveness – an organization’s ability to listen, understand and respond to demands put to it by its internal and external stakeholders – in order to depict how well or not the two public information systems and their owners have adapted to established norms and values of their surroundings. Results: Overall, the findings from the historical case studies suggest that organizations attempting to provide sustainable travel planning to the public need to design and manage their systems in such a way that it responds to shifting demands on how to provide for information. Implementing and embedding new technologies involves complex processes of change both at the micro level – for users and practitioners of the service – and at the meso level for the involved public service organizations themselves. This condition requires a contextualist framework to analyze and understand organizational, contextual and cultural issues involved in the adoption of new technologies and procedures. Conclusions: The thesis concludes with a discussion on how the findings from the historical case studies may provide lessons for both current and future attempts at providing public information systems geared towards facilitating environmentally sustainable travel planning to the public. Historical examples and issues concerning collective intelligence and peer to peer based forms of designing, producing and supervising public information services identified throughout the study are looked upon and discussed in terms of their possible role in increasing the potential for public information services to facilitate sustainable urban transport. / <p>QC 20140319</p> / TRACS, Travel Planner for Sustainable Cities