Under the motto “DadiLiner … that’s yours!”, DadiLiner, the new on-demand transport service in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district, will soon be launched. From Saturday (5 November), the first trips with the shuttles can be booked. Five municipalities (Babenhausen, Erzhausen, Griesheim, Pfungstadt and Weiterstadt) are participating in the model project, which is part of the RMV’s regional consortium “OnDeMO-FRM”, which was awarded the German Mobility Prize, and is funded by the federal government and the state of Hesse.
Flexible, individual, sustainable
The new service is on-demand ridepooling. Passengers can book the DadiLiner via app or phone and call it to them; it will then be with them within a few minutes and transport them to their destination via the fastest route. If there are passengers with similar travel requests, the trips are bundled together. In this way, passengers can reach their destination flexibly, quickly and in a climate-friendly manner within the two pilot areas.
RMV Managing Director Prof. Knut Ringat, First District Councillor Lutz Köhler and representatives of the participating cities and municipalities, the transport service provider CleverShuttle and the software company ioki, which is responsible for the RMV on-demand app, presented the new service for the DADINA area on Tuesday (1 November) in the Babenhausen town hall. An electrically powered, comfortable minibus with a spacious interior and air conditioning was available for test drives. The project is starting in the DADINA area with a total of eight vehicles, one of which is wheelchair-accessible.
Five municipalities at the start
The five participating municipalities in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district also have high expectations of the new RMV on-demand service, emphasised Dominik Stadler, Mayor of Babenhausen, when welcoming the guests. Creating a sustainable addition to the existing service as well as offering long service times and flexible connection options are some of them. In Babenhausen, the DadiLiner supplements the bus line network and trips are offered to the core city and the city districts. The cities and municipalities are financially involved in the pilot project, which runs until the end of 2024, with up to 45,000 euros per operating year and vehicle.
All nine municipal project partners launched
“With the launch of the DadiLiner, we have reached a special milestone in Germany’s largest on-demand project. Because with it, the shuttles of all nine municipal project partners of RMV are on the roads in the interconnected area,” says RMV Managing Director Prof. Knut Ringat. “Now that all the projects have been successfully launched, our goal is to firmly establish and further develop the service so that more and more people can reach their destination flexibly without their own car – even in places where buses and trains do not run at all times. That is why we expect to be the first transport association to test autonomous on-demand shuttles from the end of 2023, thus bringing together two future trends in mobility.
Over 500 stops are served
First District Councillor Lutz Köhler, who is currently Deputy Chairman of the Board of DADINA, points out that the DadiLiner creates new connections both within the municipalities and between the municipalities in the western service area. He is pleased that this innovative and modern transport system is now starting as a pilot project in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district and sees it as a useful addition to the existing public transport system. In Griesheim and Pfungstadt, the DadiLiner replaces the previous services of the call-sharing taxi. In total, the new shuttle service includes over five hundred real and virtual stops. The dense network of stops is one of the advantages of the new service.
ioki: Software provider bundles ride requests and finds optimal route
“With digital mobility services like the DadiLiner as part of public transport, we create flexible mobility for citizens in the region. Our ioki software bundles travel requests and calculates the optimal route. When passengers reach their destination quickly and easily, this saves time and CO2 emissions. In this way, on-demand transport makes an important contribution to climate protection goals and the transport turnaround in Hesse,” says ioki CEO Dr. Michael Barillère-Scholz, whose company developed the software for on-demand transport in the Rhine-Main region.
Image rights: © RMV/Holger Peters
