Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Travel Companion enhancements and RIDE-sharing services syncronised to RAIL and Public Transport

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - RIDE2RAIL (Travel Companion enhancements and RIDE-sharing services syncronised to RAIL and Public Transport)

Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2023-04-30

Globalisation, mobile and sharing economic trends increased the need for mobility. Urban sprawl and dispersed land-use patterns strengthened individual mobility behaviours, particularly in rural/low-demand areas, consolidating the car dominant role. Car occupancy rate for commuting trips in EU is about 1.1 people per vehicle, impacting congestion, energy consumption, environment.
Ride Sharing enabled by digital tools can be effective and should be encouraged for reducing the distance travelled by private vehicles and high-capacity transport feeder. A set of barriers (poor awareness of services, lack of trust and willingness to ride with strangers, low flexibility in scheduling) limit the Ride Sharing market uptake. If properly developed, ride sharing can reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicles. RIDE2RAIL exploited intelligent mobility approaches making Ride Sharing a feeder for mass transport services in low density/rural areas, deviating current demand from individual to collective mobility, improving transport accessibility. The Ride Sharing-public transport integration was achieved integrating/harmonizing real-time and information, facilitating the choice between multiple options classified by a set of user-centric criteria.
RIDE2RAIL designed, developed and tested in real demos (Padua, Brno, Athens, Helsinki) a set of software components developed in S2R IP4.
The feedback given by more than 100 demo participants generated data on their potential trips through the use of RIDE2RAIL service, both in terms of the Travel Companion and the Driver Companion apps. The demographics of the participants was spread equally across all ages, gender and employment status. Over 2,000 trips were organised, including 170 trips completed as multi-occupancy vehicle trips. Reflecting the needs of specific demo sites, an extremely high number (75% or more) were commuter trips; many involved travel to/from urban areas. Usability of the apps was rated by demo participants using the standardised System Usability Scale. The Driver companion scored 58% and the Travel Companion 57% (good usability for a demonstration app). Quick, reliable and cheap journeys were the most important categories, thus validating the findings of the literature review+conversational surveys performed at the project beginning. A comparison survey in April 2023, conducted in the area around Newcastle has demonstrated that the RIDE2RAIL concept of combining ridesharing with public transport is viewed positively in comparison to private car ownership. 77% of responses indicated that they would use the service, with 37% using it several times a month. This compares favourably with other forms of traditional and future (autonomous) shared travel services. These outputs have been tied to an impact analysis with stakeholders from local authorities, public transit and academia in the 4 demo sites, demonstrating that significant benefits of RIDE2RAIL lie in its potential for increasing public transit ridership and increasing rail connectivity.
In RP2 the project activities focused on: finalization of RIDE2RAIL components development/integration into the Shift2Rail ecosystem; organization, execution and monitoring of demonstration activities; evaluation/impact assessment.
The RIDE2RAIL Offer Categorizer, Offer Matcher&Ranker, Incentive Provider, Agreement Ledger, Crowd Based TSP have been finalized, integrated in the IP4 ecosystem and tested, enriching the Travel Companion with tools for a more personalized user experience. The Driver Companion, an app for drivers, was developed. Interaction with CFM partners took place, to align the developments to the IP4 ecosystem expectations.
Demo activities have been prepared, executed and monitored in 4 EU sites. All TSPs have been integrated in the ecosystem by CFMs, with demo actors support. Demo actors understood/tested the ecosystem and its features, and attracted users via engagement strategies. They provided technical assistance and guidelines to testers.
Previously defined KPIs have been collected and measured at demo and project level (via surveys and ecosystem analysis), understanding impacts and assessing results. The “IP4 glossary”, created with IP4MaaS/CFMs projects, was kept updated.
Multiple dissemination activities have been carried out (ex: website and social media, Transferability Workshop, 2nd stakeholders workshop). RIDE2RAIL was presented in several events and via articles/papers. A factsheet, a Project Brief, 2 videos have been produced and shared. The project had its Final Event in April 2023 in Brussels.
An exploitation strategy was also delivered at the project end. The RIDE2RAIL solutions will serve for further research activities on intermodality, technologies and Shift2Rail IP4 and also for papers and publications which will have an impact at global level (solution presented in conferences, events, meetings etc.). The partners involved in the RIDE2RAIL project operate in various areas of the transport segment which allows to exploit the RIDE2RAIL solutions. Many actions were identified for exploitation (ex: promote and raise awareness on relevance of the solutions in future research and development activities, publications, working groups, conferences). The exploitation will be ensured also by the engineering software components and bringing them potentially into the market.
RIDE2RAIL impacts were to increase the number of public transport passengers; improve rail connection with rural areas; minimize environmental pollution while traveling; propose additional criteria for decision making when planning a trip. All were achieved.
RIDE2RAIL impacted complementary projects COHESIVE, CONNECTIVE, ExtenSive, MaaSive, especially on the integration of urban sprawl underpinned by the opportunities that transport digitalization brings, for truly user-centric services for co-modality in multimodal journeys, integrating public transport, shared mobility, micro-mobility, private and on-demand.
RIDE2RAIL contributed to the S2R Strategic Master Plan and to the MAAP (customer centricity). RIDE2RAIL identified passenger preferences, developing and testing tools that integrate public and private modes allowing ride-sharing to cover the first and last mile. RIDE2RAIL contributes to capability #2 MaaS and #11 Environmental and Social Sustainability of the S2R MAAP. The focus on the rural/peri-urban areas and their integration enhanced this impact.
The approach towards integrating knowledge and strengthening innovation capacity in RIDE2RAIL had two features:
1. Combining knowledge from multiple types of actors.
2. Multi-site approach to validation and further enhancement opportunities. The planned demo sites represent different environments and user diversity, allowing to test RIDE2RAIL and IP4 solutions in a comprehensive way providing robustness to the outcomes. RIDE2RAIL went beyond the expected impacts exploring the role that the solutions proposed could have in facilitating the implementation of key innovations – e.g. autonomous vehicles (Helsinki demo) and blockchain technology.
r2r-kom-dec-2019.jpg
r2r-final-event-27-04-2023.jpg
My booklet 0 0