CityLink Shuttle takes Kuwait’s on-demand service off the phone
A white-label corner-to-corner network for City Group Co. KSCP — 2,213 virtual stops over 563 km², 60 vehicles, and over 130,000 passengers served.
- Setting
- Kuwait City and Salmiya
- Service model
- Corner-to-corner, full city coverage
- Operator
- City Group Co. KSCP
- Live since
- July 2022
Results
118,152 completed rides across the operation to date.
Over a 563 km² service area — full city coverage, minimal walking to a stop.
Average 20 minutes waiting and 30 minutes travelling, held through peak hours.
The challenge
A fixed network that could not connect Salmiya to the jobs
Workers travel daily from residential Salmiya into the business districts of Kuwait City. The fixed-route network failed to connect the two — thin coverage, long walks to a stop, too little at peak hours to be worth using. Year-round heat rules out walking; parking in the centre is scarce.
So people drove, the critical corridors congested, and anyone who does not drive lost out. City Group Co. KSCP already ran CityBus and GoCity, but on-demand rides went through a call centre.
CGC tendered for a fully digitised service. Shotl and Swvl applied jointly and won, announced in August 2022.
What we deployed
CityLink Shuttle — a white-label app built for CGC
- 01Won by tender
CGC ran a bidding process for a fully digitised on-demand service; Shotl and Swvl applied jointly and won.
- 02The operator’s own brand
CityLink Shuttle carries CGC’s identity, alongside their CityBus and GoCity services.
- 03Pre-positioning
Vehicles moved ahead of the morning, midday and evening peaks to hold wait times down.
- 04Supervised live
An integrated platform gives CGC real-time supervision, performance tracking and full traceability.
2,213 virtual stops over 563 km²
Testing began in mid-June 2022 in a small pilot area; the service now runs full city coverage. Riders book instantly in the app and are assigned to the nearest stop, so the walk at either end stays short. A dynamic assignment engine pools and re-plans in real time against capacity, travel times and operational constraints.
How virtual stops are placedOn site
The CityLink Shuttle app — CGC’s own brand, built by Shotl. 
Booking moved off the call centre and into the app — immediate or scheduled rides. 
2,213 virtual stops over 563 km² — riders are assigned the nearest one.
Dr. Dheeraj BhardwajGroup CEO, City Group Co. KSCP“The core objective of CityLink Shuttle is to provide smooth and safe transportation to match supply with demand efficiently in busy urban areas, in turn making those areas congestion-free.”
“Vehicles alter their routes automatically based on transport demand, without fixed routes or timetabled journeys, picking up and dropping off at specific stops according to passengers’ needs. The technology ensures those locations are within walking distance.”
Similar challenges
Where climate, not distance, decides the trip
Kuwait has one of the most prosperous economies anywhere, and still a mobility problem: heat and parking scarcity remove both obvious alternatives at once. Where that holds, the trip is decided by climate rather than distance.
What travels well is the setup — an operator with a call-centre service to digitise, a dense residential-to-business corridor, and a client who wants the service under their own brand.
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