The Highlands treat the whole journey as one problem
With regional partnership HITRANS, on-demand transport connects remote communities to ferries, trains and buses — because in the Highlands the connection is the journey.
- Setting
- Remote rural
- Service model
- First/last-mile
- Partners
- HITRANS · Moray Council
- Platform
- GoHi, via API
Results
On-demand transport bookable alongside bus and rail in HITRANS's multi-modal app.
Shared on-demand legs, timed against the onward connection.
Vehicles move on request, where thin demand cannot justify a fixed route.
The challenge
Highland travel is rarely a single trip
A journey typically chains a local leg to a ferry, a train or a long-distance coach, and the whole thing fails if any one link is missing.
Long distances and thin demand mean no scheduled service can be justified for the first and last few miles — which is exactly where the chain breaks.
Moray Council already ran an award-winning dial-a-bus in the area. The task was not to replace it but to digitalise it, and to make it bookable from inside the region’s own mobility platform.
What we deployed
The local leg, timed against the connection that matters
HITRANS won backing from the Scottish Government’s MaaS Investment Fund in 2019 to build a region-wide, multi-modal platform. GoHi launched on 21 June, and on-demand transport in the Moray Council area is bookable inside it — Shotl feeding the app through an API. The service went live first around Aberlour, in the deeply rural Speyside area.
- 01Virtual stops at the door
In deeply rural Speyside, stops are created at people's homes.
- 02Booked inside GoHi
On-demand trips sit alongside bus and rail in the region's own app, served through an API.
- 03An existing service, digitalised
Moray Council's award-winning dial-a-bus, moved onto the platform.
- 04Accessible by design
Low-floor vehicles, and drivers told in advance what assistance each rider needs.
One booking inside the region’s own app
Riders do not book a Shotl service. They book in GoHi, alongside bus and rail, and the on-demand leg is served through an API behind it — which is what makes the local leg part of the journey rather than a separate arrangement.
How the API worksOn site
Ranald RobertsonDirector, HITRANS“We are talking about a very deeply rural area. We’re having to create virtual stops at people’s homes.”
“A lot of the user base are elderly people whose mobility can be impaired, so we have to have the right solution, the right vehicle that is low for easy access — and the driver needs to know what services and what support they might need to provide to their customers. All of this is proven possible through the app.”
Similar challenges
The problem isn’t specific to the Highlands
What makes the Highlands hard is not remoteness alone. It is a network whose trunk services work, with gaps at the edges that no timetable can economically close — and journeys that only succeed if every link holds.
It is a useful reference for any authority whose problem is not a single corridor but a network with gaps at its edges.
Demand responsiveScattered townsCártama
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Dynamic bus line−15% mileageSant Vicenç de Montalt
SpainA bus line that keeps its spine but opens on-demand stops when requested.
Demand responsive+500% ridersStradella
Italy28 villages over 234 km² connected with two vehicles — 350 passengers a week.