The service in the city of Les Mureaux, 40 kilometres west of Paris, will start on Saturday, 11th of December and is intended to improve the mobility for residents, especially beyond the regular operating hours of public transport. The project pursues the approach of making mobility available for all citizens, like schoolchildren, professionals and senior citizens benefit from the flexible supplement.
“The recent development of new forms of mobility: free-floating bicycles and scooters, short-distance carpooling, etc. shows that it is possible to offer innovations in the field of daily mobility directly to the general public working alongside with local authorities. VanO offers a new mobility service, a demand responsive van, accessible to all, intend-ed for medium-sized towns,” says Hugues Hansen, CEO and founder of VanO.
“Our innovative technology, which we are offering on the French market for the first time, ensures environmentally friendly, inclusive and safe mobility. In this way, we significantly improve people’s quality of life,“ says Benjamin Pfeifer, Chief Commercial Officer and member of the management board at ioki, responsible for ioki’s services in Europe. “The project shows how demand responsive transport can fill specific mobility gaps. The inclusive character of this project matches our vision of connecting people and shaping the future of public transport.”
More service and comfort for passengers
ioki provides the operating system for the digital mobility solution – passengers can book the shuttle in real time or in advance via a mobile application. The intelligent algorithm of the platform powered by ioki forms carpools between passengers with similar origins and destinations. This ensures efficient utilization of vehicle capacity and thus helps protect the climate and reduce urban congestion.
For this purpose, virtual stops were created in the city and are less than a minutes’ walk away. The shuttle facilitates the daily commute by connecting new areas and increasing the frequency during off-peak hours. VanO’s service closes the gap between the existing bus infrastructure and strengthens individual mobility without a car in the city of Les Mureaux. The on-demand shuttle is provided by VanO’s partner Toyota France and offers space for up to eight people.
ioki continues growth path
With the new service, ioki is continuing on a successful growth course in European countries outside the DACH region. The company’s holistic and solution-oriented approach pursues a specific goal: to enhance more mobility by creating less traffic. ioki has been one of the pioneers of a new, digital and customer-centric mobility. This is also reflected in the user figures – more than one million passengers have already been transported on the platform. ioki is known as tech and mobility enabler across the DACH region and was able to launch several new services in Germany, Switzerland and Spain in the past twelve months despite the pandemic situation. The company is part of Deutsche Bahn, which has already realised around 330 on-demand services within the past three years, transporting seven million passengers.
