(Paderborn, April 15, 2019) From now on, passengers will be able to get to and back from Paderborn-Lippstadt Airport in a very comfortable way. The new demand-responsive transport offer brings customers flexibly from their desired address to the airport and vice versa without fixed timetables or routes. The operator of the new service is BVO Busverkehr Ostwestfalen GmbH, a regional bus company of DB Regio Bus. The technical platform was developed by ioki, the subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn for intelligent demand-responsive mobility.

The new service is very simple: customers book a ride with the “PAD Shuttle” app – either spontaneously or up to 30 days in advance. The offer is available 24/7 and costs 1.75 Euro per kilometre. In case a ride is shared by multiple different customers, there is a discount of ten percent. The service area reaches from Lippstadt and Warstein in the west to Höxter in the east. In the south, we operate up to Bad Naumburg and Kassel and in the North up to Minden and Petershagen. The new service will initially be in trial operation for six months and will be operated by 20 minibuses.

Guido Verhoefen, Head of Marketing and Business Development at DB Regio Bus, explains: “In many cases, the classic public bus is the right offer for the mobility needs of our customers. However, more and more flexibility concerning the offer is demanded. Paderborn-Lippstadt Airport is a prime example of this: Here we combine the quality and reliability of a traditional local transport company with state-of-the-art demand-responsive technology.”

“The key feature of this new offer is our intelligent algorithm. It ensures that passengers with similar routes are bundled into carpools and transported together. Doing so, we relieve the burden on traffic and the environment. ioki offers all services from a single source to enable third parties to operate such demand-responsive mobility offers in public transport under their own name,” says ioki CEO, Michael Barillère-Scholz.

“We are the first airport to offer this shuttle service and very proud to be at the forefront of intelligent mobility offerings. For our passengers, the Airport Shuttle Paderborn-Lippstadt is an attractive addition to their travel to and from the airport by public transport and their own car,” emphasises Dr Marc Cezanne, Managing Director of Flughafen Paderborn-Lippstadt GmbH.

“Not only do we have enough vehicles, but we also have qualified drivers who carry out the shuttle service. That’s why we took up the idea immediately and are very curious to see how the passengers will accept the offer,” emphasises Michael Pölz from BVO.

Source: Deutsche Bahn Press