Wednesday, 18 November 2009 16:27

TRI announces major technical development in rural transport

TRI's Dr. James M Cooper and Mr. Jeff Duffell UK Operations Director of Mobisoft, presented an outline of a Rural Transport and DRT portal at an Edinburgh ITS meeting held at the Scottish Government.

The concept arises as a significant part of joint work between Napier, Mobisoft UK, and partners Quotient Associates and Aberdeen University. The project seeks to simplify how Demand Responsive Transport is offered and booked.  Although Demand Responsive Transport (DRT - shared door to door public transport) has developed in a number of urban and rural areas, solutions are local with no mechanism to offer services further afield - for example if you wish to book DRT in Cornwall, does it exist?

Also, transport providers, particularly smaller ones, cannot offer their services to the users easily, even though demand and spare capacity exist, as they cannot afford to invest in advanced scheduling systems.

A DRT Management Portal will match the demand for shared transport to the supply and allow passengers to actually book transport in real time. A trial will demonstrate how existing operators can interface to their current systems and new, smaller, operators can offer their services directly.

The project will show how such an approach can remove the barriers to shared travel.

"We wish to offer new forms of flexible transport that people will actually use, by making it easy for them to use it" says Jeff Duffell the UK Operations Director with Mobisoft.

Further information on the project can be obtained from:

Dr James Cooper

Tel: 0131 208 1055,

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