Kawasaki turned the walk to the station into a shared ride
With rail operator Odakyū, on-demand shuttles collect passengers from residential streets and deliver them to the rail network — solving the last mile that decides whether the train is used at all.
- Setting
- Suburban rail catchment
- Service model
- First/last-mile
- Complements
- Odakyū rail network
- Booking
- App and operator MaaS app
Results
Consistently high satisfaction across the feeder service.
Modelling showed the same fleet could carry twice the riders.
Folded into the operator's own app so the journey is booked in one place.
The challenge
Two pressures on Japan's secondary transport at once
As the country ages, the number of vulnerable road users keeps rising — and at the same time there are fewer and fewer drivers to carry out transport services. Odakyū set up the proof of concept to answer both by making the service itself more efficient with technology.
The area chosen is residential Kawasaki: narrow streets and family houses, the kind of fabric conventional public transport struggles to serve. The rail network was never the problem — reaching it was.
What we deployed
A feeder shaped around train times, not its own timetable
- 01Station-anchored zone
A service area drawn around the rail node it feeds.
- 02Virtual stops
Pickup points in residential streets beyond the walking radius.
- 03Train-aligned pickups
Journeys timed against departures rather than a shuttle timetable.
- 04MaaS integration
Booking through Odakyū's own app in the second phase.
Designed to feed the network, not compete with it
The service exists to fill trains. Pickups are timed against departures, and the zone is drawn to complement rail rather than duplicate any route that already runs.
How the assignment rules workOn site
Booking from the street: the app adapted for the Japanese market, navigation and language included. 
The driver app in Japanese — pickups and drop-offs in the order the routing engine sets them. 
A shared minivan collecting riders in streets too narrow for a conventional bus route.
Masashi HisatomiExecutive Officer, Odakyu“We chose Shotl because of the fact that they already had running operations in several cities in Europe. And we thought there would be learning from their operations, like the case in Barcelona, where the operation environment seemed very close to where we see transportation problems.”
Similar challenges
The problem isn’t specific to Japan
What made Kawasaki hard is not Japan. It is a residential fabric of narrow streets and family houses sitting just outside a station’s walking radius, an ageing population for whom that radius keeps shrinking, and too few drivers to run more fixed services into it.
Odakyū chose Shotl because the same conditions had already been met in Europe — Barcelona above all. Where a good rail line ends in streets a bus cannot serve, the feeder model carries over: virtual stops, pickups timed to departures, and booking inside the operator’s own app.
Demand responsiveInner cityLisbon city centre
PortugalShotl's first inner-city service, run with Carris in dense central streets.
Demand responsiveRider-set timesSant Cugat
SpainRidership rose on suburban routes once riders could choose their own departure.
Demand responsive−90% waitTorre Baró
SpainA steep, disconnected neighbourhood reached a 4.7/5 rider rating.