Shotl wins the IATR 2018 Data Challenge

Shotl was selected by a committee of IATR judges as the winning candidate and was invited to present in Philadelphia on September 16th at the 31st Annual Conference. 

The last month of June, the International Association of Transportation Regulators (IATR) published a Data Challenge to find solutions that examined best practices to improve mobility services to wheelchair users. The purpose was to improve the mobility of the physically challenged and reduce operational costs. 

The IATR's data common contained pick-up and drop-off information, trip fares, and crash information from various associated entities and was made available to contestants to investigate innovative solutions. Access to data was provided remotely to participating teams, and solutions had to be based on real parameters and a questionary, that were rendered at the opening of the challenge. 

Most shared accessible transportation requires rides to be pre-booked several hours or even days in advance and is still dispatched manually. This is a major constrain over the freedom of movement of wheelchair users who need to rely on a service with high operational costs, often not providing real time affordable mobility for spontaneous rides.

The winning team at Shotl addressed this challenge by applying a simulator, which is able to provide an accurate estimation of the impact of a real-time on demand shared transportation system in terms of cost and user-experience. Before receiving the award, the Co-CEO Gerard Martret presented the results of the research in front of an wide audience composed of transportation regulators from all over the U.S. and other parts of the World.

The results proved that applying the Shotl platform would enable a new type of transport service for wheelchair users that's:

• Affordable: App dispatched shared taxis and for-hire adapted vans and minibuses can be considered as a cost-effective alternative to para-transit.
• Equitable: Door-to-door pre-arranged pick-ups to be combined with on-demand rides in real-time would provide instant rides to the physically challenged and general population combined.
• Accessible: ADA compliant dynamically routed on-demand shared transport can be an alternative to para-transit transportation services, particularly in suburban and rural areas.

The International Association of Transportation Regulators (IATR) is an expanding group of fellow experts in the field of taxi, limousine and for-hire transport regulation, whose mission is to improve the practice of permitting, enforcement and governance of for-hire transportation through sharing best practices and teachings.

Shotl On-demand Shuttles is a platform that matches multiple passengers headed in the same direction with an available vehicle. The software empowers transport operators and cities make a better use of its transportation assets by replacing low-ridership routes with on-demand shuttles.