The city of Denver, CO has integrated a convenient transportation option to improve the ease of the demand respond transit service. With the help from DemandTrans, customers have the ability to request a ride for any time while the drivers are able to plan its route efficiently.
Public transportation is an important part of any city. The variety of options for transport give people the choice that best suit their needs. In the U.S, the Regional Transportation District (RTD) in Denver, Colorado has implemented a demand response transit (DRT) system from DemandTrans to offer people a convenient way to call up a vehicle at their location. The utilization of big data enhances the productivity of the city's public transit system.
In the past, the DRT was a service for a specific population such as those with disabilities. The RTD decided to provide a DRT service for the general public several years ago. Jeff Beck, Senior Director of Service Planning at Regional Transportation District in Denver said the motivation was to "improve customer service by offering choices for self-service booking with real time ETA notification. Provide drivers report with an electronic manifest, navigation assistant, automated data collection and better customer communication." RTA also wanted to implement top of the line scheduling technology to offer different service configuration, improve productivity and keep booking scheduling dispatch at a low cost.
Roger Teal, President of DemandTrans Solutions, was brought in to help with the planning process. MobilityDR was utilized for the DRT in Denver. It allows public transport organization to provide different types of demand response and flex transit services. Customers are able to book rides for pickup with a dedicated vehicle at a designated or desired locations. The entire system are constantly being monitored to provide quality customer service. "We collect tons of information and analyze it and actually update system perimeters automatically so we have a number of Big Data features here," said Teal.
MobilityDR allows public transport organization to provide different types of demand response and flex transit services.
MobilityDR provides customers with the application on their smartphone to book trips or agent booking for phone-based customer reservations. They will be able to request a pickup by entering a specific time and location, the system will then set up a list of scheduled times and nearest checkpoint stop. Alternative time slots will be provided if the requested pickup is not available at the time. A customer notification system is set up to let the people know when the vehicle is near the requested pickup. "It's all fully automated, there is no need to interact with a human being whatsoever," said Teal.
The driver will have the MobilityDR application on a tablet computer with the manifest, map-based visual direction and audio driving instructions. All the information is there for the driver to perform the tour. The scheduling system is able to collect all the reservation from customers and add in additional request in real time from non-reserved customers. An algorithm is able to analyze all the data and provide the drivers with the most efficient route to take.
An administrator or supervisor can oversee the driver through the system to see the vehicle activity. Real time tracking allow the overseer to see the current position of the vehicle and its scheduled destination. All the information about the vehicle is stored in a database. If there is a late arrival for a vehicle, the database is there to see the possible reason for the delay.
Currently, DemandTrans is in the process of improving scheduling by enabling the ability to assign trips to multiple services other than dedicated vehicle provider such as taxi services, Uber or Lyft. A federally funded project in Denver is attempting to create a data exchange hub to "allow a virtual pool of vehicles to be addressed by multiple reservation systems," said Teal. "We're trying to make the whole scheduling side of the system as flexible as possible but also tapping into the lowest cost and highest quality forms of capacity." RTD is continuously seeking ways to enhance its DRT operation in Denver. Beck said, "To evolve gracefully, we have continue to annually assess current operations and identify new technology to improve the quality and sophistication, the service delivery and customer experience."