NEWS - 2022/04/01

MultiDEPART – A Project to Facilitate the Deployment of Demand Responsive Transit Services

Since March 2021, the MultiDEPART project consortium has been working on the development of three key planning and managing tools that will help Public Transport Authorities and operators to scale DRT (Demand Responsive Transit) Services in their areas.

On 24 March, a final event was hosted in Barcelona by the project partner AMB (Barcelona Metropolitan Area) and coordinated by CARNET, where the consortium partners presented the project evolution and the strategy for past project implementations and where Cristina Juárez, Chief Innovation Officer at CARNET, participated. It was also an opportunity to present the developed tools, which are now ready to be commercialised by CAPGEMINI and KMF Ventures and help transport operators and transport authorities in their deployment of demand-responsive transportation for their cities and metropolitan areas. These are:

  • Planning tool: to provide strategic information to define the most suitable area, operation modes and stop locations to help simulate a DRT service operation
  • Dashboard: to help Public Transport Authorities and Transport Operators to assess multiple DRT services. The dashboard visualizes a list of representative KPIs that allow monitoring and understanding of the performance of the DRT services
  • Business Tool: to define if the implementation of DRT services will be profitable. Includes a report about different categories that will be positively affected by the implementation of the DRT solution, as well as a financial analysis tool to estimate the profitability of the new service

The project was born to provide an answer to the increasing demand for DRT, a concept that has been known and exploited in rural areas (mostly based on telephone calls and manual routing of the services). Nowadays, it also has the potential to solve accessibility to urban low-demand areas thanks to the digitalization of public transport and mass adoption of mobile phones by many segments of the population. This fact makes the creation of flexible routes and schedules based on actual demand collected easier and more effective.

Even though the project finished on 31 March 2022, the project partners have already been able to secure 2 new pilots in which the tools developed will be deployed for new demand-responsive services: one in Thessaloniki (Greece) and another one in Lisbon (Portugal).

The project, financed by EIT Urban Mobility, is developed by a consortium of 12 partners from different European countries bringing universities, research centres, transport operators, public authorities, and industry players together: CARNET, FACTUAL, Capgemini Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Carris, Aimsun, Centre for Research & Technology Hellas (CERTH), The Thessaloniki Transport Authority, Tusgsal, Nemi and Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB).

Share:

Go Up