Shotl launches its most ambitious operation to date
Moray Council's demand-responsive service, Dial M for Moray, has been digitised and brought into the HITRANS GO-HI app, starting with five vehicles in Speyside. Here is how door-to-door pick-ups and fare calculation were set up for a widely spread rural population.
Moray in the Scottish Highlands is a rural local authority with a very low population density. Reconciling mobility provision for inhabitants with keeping costs down has been an ongoing challenge for transport providers that this project set out to meet.
The story began when Highland Transport Authority HITRANS decided to modernize and digitize their transport system to keep up with new trends being adopted elsewhere in the world. With this aim, the Scottish government commissioned Fleetondemand to develop a MaaS project and an application called Mobilleo for users to interact with transport in the region.
In addition, a specific application was developed for HITRANS called GO-HI. Similar to Mobilleo, the HITRANS app had to integrate all Highlands transport information, from bus schedules to carsharing and, of course, the new demand-responsive transportation (DRT) system Shotl developed for Moray council, which updated the previous analog DRT system, Dial M for Moray.
Covering over 2,100 km², Moray is divided into five smaller areas: Buckie, Elgin, Forres, Keith and Speyside. The latter covers 1,200 km² and was the location for Shotl's first DRT operations in Moray, with other areas planned to join over the following weeks. The objective is always to evolve the service towards a unified model and improved user experience.
The operation began in June 2021 with five vehicles, of a total of 14 expected once all areas were integrated, running all day Monday-Friday and reduced hours on Saturdays.
Door to Door: taking DRT to a new level
Two major technological developments have been implemented for this operation. First, Door-to-Door, a feature that allows passengers to be picked up right at their place of origin and dropped off right outside their destination, eliminating the trip to and from the bus stop. This type of service is ideal for people with reduced mobility (PRM) or, indeed, for any other operation where it could be useful. In urban and peri-urban environments, for practical, safety or regulatory reasons, a Corner-to-Corner system is more appropriate. However, Moray is a purely rural area with a widely distributed population. Therefore, this project fully justifies Door-to-Door and builds on Shotl’s success with rural projects like Stradella (Italy) and Alta Segarra (Spain).
A Fare Calculating System has also been developed. Once certain parameters are input, like origin, destination, type of passenger and/or possible discounts, the application gives the journey price. Payment is also fully integrated into the GO-HI app.
Moray's new DRT system was one of Shotl’s largest deployments by area at the time and took place along with the joint launch of our technology in several European cities during spring 2021.
