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ViaVan pilot in Helsinki region to end on March 14

The pilot for an on-demand mobility service launched by Helsinki Regional Transport (HSL) in partnership with ViaVan, will end as originally planned on Saturday 14 March. Throughout the six-month pilot, the service received consistently strong customer feedback, with an overall customer satisfaction score of 96% from riders.

“The pilot provided us with understanding of how an on-demand service could complement traditional public transport,” says Tero Anttila, the director of public transport department at HSL. “Our cooperation with ViaVan has been good, and we look forward to analyzing the results of the pilot together during the spring in order to conclude what we have learned.”

“ViaVan's mission is to provide cities with dynamic, on-demand technology to expand access to public transport and reduce the number of private vehicles on the road,” says Chris Snyder, CEO of ViaVan. “The strong results from our pilot in Espoo show the power that smart, shared mobility offerings can have to significantly improve connectivity across the entire Helsinki region, without the need for a private vehicle.”

ViaVan provided a high quality service and experience, with vehicle wait times under 10 minutes on average, and efficient and convenient routing powered by ViaVan’s mobile app and technology. The service was used for both commuting and traveling to leisure activities, and more than 38 percent of rides were first-and-last mile stretches to and from train and metro stations in the service area.

HSL identified several specific goals for the IdeaLab project. These included reducing private vehicle usage, serving multiple leisure and commuting use cases, improving accessibility to public transport and improving journey times.

ViaVan provided more than 16,000 rides, with more than 1,500 unique riders using the service. Detailed ridership figures will be published in the final report that will be released during the spring after the pilot has ended.

ViaVan was the second on-demand service HSL has tried as part of its public transport services. In Eastern Espoo – the ViaVan service area – no changes were made to the regular public transport services because of the pilot, and the high quality of HSL public transport in the area will remain in place.

Winner of the IdeaLab competition

The ViaVan service was one of the winners in the 2018 IdeaLab competition organized by HSL. The aim of the competition was to find new innovations for mobility services in the future. ViaVan, alongside the winner from the Summer 2019 competition for an electric scooter service in Vuosaari, were both granted 500,000 euros to run the service.

The pilot was launched in Espoo 16 September 2019, and the areas of Matinkylä and Olari as well as the Leppävaara swimming hall were added to the service area during the fall.

After the pilot ends as scheduled on March 14, HSL and ViaVan will analyze the final results for a report that will be released in the spring.