During the early stages of the pandemic, Transport for Wales (TfW) decided to try something new. In May 2020 it launched fflecsi, an app-based service that allows people to book a shuttle minibus from “floating bus stops” near their homes directly to their destination.
Available in 11 locations across Wales, the service was an immediate hit: in five weeks passenger numbers grew 150%, and in its first 12 months it served 50,000 trips. Best of all, 9% of its riders were people who hadn’t previously used public transport. As one passenger said: “This is too good to be true. This is Pembrokeshire, we don’t get transport like this.”
Wales wasn’t the only place experimenting with demand-responsive transport (DRT). Pilot DRT projects also sprang up in the suburbs of Munster in Germany, Osaka in Japan and Lone Tree in Colorado.
Lukas Foljanty, a shared-mobility enthusiast and market expert, keeps track of the different DRT schemes around the world and thinks we may have reached a tipping point. There are already at least 450 schemes around the world, but last year 54 new projects emerged within a three-month period.
The roots of DRT are in community transport, often door-to-door shuttles for older or less mobile citizens, and we’ve known for some time that it could have huge environmental benefits. A 2005 study modelling the impact of a theoretical DRT network in the Helsinki metropolitan area concluded there could be a huge impact. It said: “In an urban area with 1 million inhabitants, trip aggregation could reduce the health, environmental and other detrimental impacts of car traffic typically by 50 to 70%, and if implemented could attract about half of the car passengers, and within a broad operational range would require no public subsidies.”
But until now the schemes have not quite worked. In the mid-2010s, several DRT operators in the US – the likes of Chariot and Loup – appeared and then promptly went out of business, either because they failed to get enough customers or did not meet health and safety requirements. Chariot’s then CEO, Ali Vahabzadeh, told the Verge in 2017: “Not to sound dramatic [but] no one in the history of the world has created a profitable mass transit service … That’s our mission.” That mission failed within two years.
And the US wasn’t alone. In 2019, with technology partners Via and MOIA, Transport for London (TfL) launched two trials of DRT, in Ealing and Sutton in outer London – both areas with high car useage – designed to complement existing transport. While it ran, the team said “satisfaction was really high”, with users scoring the service 4.8/5, praising ease of use, safety, cleanliness and accessibility. But low take-up, misunderstandings about who the service was for and safety concerns about unlit stops – combined with challenges brought by the pandemic – led to the 12-month trial being cut short.
But if it can be made to work, DRT is an obvious and excellent answer to a number of tricky questions. Public transport is urgently in need of an update, and congestion and pollution mean traffic must be reduced. Now, local authorities are beginning to hope that technology – the ability for apps and mapping algorithms to improve efficiency and better aggregate trips on the hoof – has brought the idea into the 21st century. Companies such as Via, ioki, spare, Padam and RideCo could provide apps and mapping algorithms to run services; local authorities could provide the buses and drivers.
What about concerns that DRT would increase rather than decrease the number of vehicles on the road, since some users may choose the service instead of existing public transport? Lisa Dang, a research associate at Lucerne University, looked into the impact on traffic volumes and found that only where DRT supplemented existing public transport were there CO2 reductions, because users in those places switched from taxi or private car. In order to work, she believes, DRT will have to shift most of its rides from private motor vehicles, while achieving higher average capacity than the private car.
David Carnero, the head of international business at Padam, which operates DRT tech across Europe, Asia and North America, says successful DRT needs three key elements for success. “DRT, whichever way you try to cut it – unless you’re lying – requires subsidies,” he says. Second, it needs to be delivered “at scale, and I would suggest that the other important aspect is integrated transport policy” – in other words, ensuring it meshes with existing transport, rather than competing with it.
Carnero adds: “DRT is not the holy grail at all, but it is a component within an integrated transport policy or network offering that allows you to deliver against things like social exclusion.”
In Lincolnshire, the rural DRT service CallConnect is now in its second decade. Most users are elderly people and students, and Stuart Eccles, Lincolnshire’s senior transport officer, says that without it many people would struggle to travel, relying instead on lifts from neighbours or friends, or “very expensive” taxis.
Eccles says the recent introduction of an app has increased the number of last-minute bookings, which he sees as the technology offering users more freedom and control. While the telephone option will remain for older customers, he says the app data provides vital insight into users’ needs and on potential improvements.
