Demand-responsive transport based on the ridepooling concept is on everyone's lips and has long been an important pillar of individual, public transport. Data-based transport planning is needed to realise the full potential of on-demand mobility. When transport companies want to start a new on-demand operation, they inevitably face the question of the right ridepooling design and the best balance between the costs and benefits of the flexible offer.

Ridepooling can increase the productive operating hours of on-demand operations. With ioki Analytics the Mobility Analytics and Consulting Team at ioki supports the planning and optimisation of new mobility offers with ridepooling. The operational and economic effects of different planning variations are determined in an operational simulation for different use cases. The basis for this is the traffic demand from the mobility simulation and the boundaries of the planned on-demand service area. In addition, we have data from existing on-demand services with the ridepooling software powered by ioki. The knowledge gained from these services also flows into the evaluation to analyse the demand in the best possible way. 

For the appropriate ridepooling use case and thus the success of the on-demand service, our experts take various parameters into account. These include fleet characteristics, the planned waiting and service times of the transport or how many detours are accepted for journey requests. Based on the ioki algorithm, the operational simulation can determine how many vehicles are needed to provide passengers with a high-quality service. In concrete terms, this means that the incoming ride requests are optimally distributed among the available vehicles.  

The ride pooling parameters diversions and waiting time have the greatest influence on the overall public transport system and on the passengers. As a rule, an increase in waiting time by a few minutes does not result in a loss of quality for passengers. After all, on-demand shuttles reach more people than scheduled public transport services. Our mobility experts work together with the transport companies to coordinate mobility concepts. 

More about Mobility Analytics at ioki here.