As the UK strives to build a more sustainable and socially-inclusive future, reducing reliance on private vehicles is an ever-more-urgent priority. Demand-responsive transport — which, over the past decade, has grown from a niche service mode with limited applications into a well-integrated component of many communities’ public transport networks — will play a key role in the large swathes of the country that cannot afford to support frequent, high-quality fixed-route bus service.
But as many of these authorities are now learning, administering a DRT scheme is hardly simple. And the stakes of improving DRT efficiency are higher than ever, as the fuel and driver costs associated with all public transport continue to rise.
Though better technology certainly raises vehicle productivity, authorities looking to achieve significant savings on cost-per-journey should consider an additional intervention: unifying technology and operations under a single vendor specialising in both. In Milton Keynes, where Via has delivered a unified technology and operations solution since 2021, subsidy-per-passenger is now 67% lower than the fixed-route network in place before its launch.
There are examples of results like this all around the world. But the UK has been slower to adopt a unified approach, with modernising DRT seen as a matter of “adding technology” rather than rethinking services from the ground up. Read on to learn how Via has consistently achieved more efficient services with unified technology and operations — and how this approach can achieve operational efficiencies and cost-reductions in the UK.
Unified tech and operations for higher efficiency, higher quality service.
Unifying technology and operations impacts DRT’s bottom line above and beyond improving one or the other individually. Though it’s true that Via’s technology alone achieves better results than our UK competitors (see chart below), we’ve seen truly dramatic improvements in vehicle productivity when we have taken over both technology and operations in services that previously operated with separate providers for each.
In Germany, we oversaw improvements in patronage and productivity when assuming responsibility for services previously operated by Clevershuttle, and powered by another tech provider, following Clevershuttle’s insolvency in Autumn 2023. In one such service, the subsidy per passenger dropped nearly 50% while patronage and productivity rose dramatically.
And in Milton Keynes, the subsidy per passenger for DRT is now £4.50 on average — down from ~£13-14 per passenger on the city’s old fixed-route network. That’s a 67% reduction in subsidy, a major achievement, and an important counterexample to those who complain that DRT subsidies are always higher than fixed-route. Lower subsidies are achievable, but require coordination between technology and operations that’s difficult to achieve outside a unified solution.
How does Via achieve these results for partners?
A unified technology and operations solution for DRT saves local authorities money in three primary ways:
- Saving staff time and overhead associated with procuring and managing multiple vendors.
- Precisely matching supply to demand by leveraging real-time and historical analytics.
- Right-sizing fleet composition and vehicle model(s) for the service’s use case, with flexibility to adjust the fleet as service needs evolve.
Saving staff time and overhead.
Public transport is complicated. There are drivers to be hired and managed, vehicles to be maintained, call centres to staff in anticipation of passenger queries and complaints. DRT introduces the need for software, another critical and highly-specialised component.
Most public transport in the UK is delivered by a number of distinct vendors. This structure not only necessitates multiple procurements, each costly and time-consuming, but requires the authority to coordinate individually with points of contact at each vendor to manage daily service.
A single vendor means one point of contact, and finely-tuned internal processes — not to mention technologies — to facilitate the kind of information exchange necessary to smooth daily service. Problems get solved faster, with fewer phone calls, and without requiring the local authority’s own staff to get involved in the low-level mechanics of delivering service. In the United States, this model has allowed city governments with very small teams — or without transport departments entirely — to implement well-tailored, efficient DRT services in their communities.
Fine-tuning supply and demand.
The unique challenge of DRT is right in the name: it’s response to passenger “demand,” which varies by location, time of day, day of week, and time of year. A good routing and passenger aggregation algorithm takes in-the-moment trip requests and groups them into efficient routes on the fly, with passengers sharing vehicles whenever possible. As shown above, there are meaningful differences between software platforms in their ability to achieve this efficiency — especially without sending passengers on long, winding journeys all around town.
But an algorithm can only do so much. It comes up with the ideal solution to the routing problem at hand. If drivers and vehicles aren’t on the road when and where they’re needed, the ideal solution can’t be realised, and efficiency goes down. Supply and demand will never match perfectly. But an experienced, tech-enabled DRT operator can get the closest, and realise considerable savings for local authorities.
Via’s operations teams are experts at designing driver shift plans that are consistent enough to appeal to drivers, yet reflect the reality of demand variation throughout the day. At particularly busy times, when supply is constrained, Via’s team can implement changes to algorithm parameters — the distance passengers are expected to walk, the permitted length of detour a vehicle can make — that further prioritise efficient use of the available fleet. Real-time analytics — the proportion of passenger requests that can be met, for example, or the wait times they’re experiencing — are freely available to Via dispatchers, who receive alerts when certain metrics reach predetermined thresholds.
Right-sizing vehicles and fleet composition.
Vehicle operation costs are a significant component of the overall costs of operating a DRT service — and many local authorities are paying too much for vehicles that aren’t ideally-suited to DRT operations. Many also work with operators that specialise in just one kind of vehicle, limiting an authority’s ability to adjust fleet composition when they uncover opportunities for cost-savings.
Larger vehicles are considerably more expensive, on an hourly basis, to operate than smaller vehicles — and often are larger than necessary to accommodate typical DRT patronage. Take a look back at the chart showing average utilisation of UK DRT services. Via provides more efficient DRT than our competitors, but even our average utilisation sits just under 4 passengers per vehicle hour.
In other words, in most services, it’s very rare that enough passengers would book trips within the same hour (let alone at the exact same time) such that a vehicle would need more than 4 seats. A minivan, significantly cheaper to operate, would be the right choice for these kinds of services. Only in services where utilisation is higher, or where the vehicle is being used for multiple purposes throughout the day which may entail a larger vehicle, would a minibus be required.
Via works with nationally-recognised vehicle suppliers across the UK to acquire the right-size vehicle for every service we operate.
Because we lease these vehicles, we retain the flexibility not only to scale the overall fleet size up and down — adding or removing vehicles from peak service — but to change the composition of the fleet as needed. If a service needs one minibus to accommodate high demand at certain times of day, we can deliver a mixed fleet that includes that single minibus alongside a fleet of minivans better-suited to the service’s demand patterns at other times of day.
What's next?
We’d love to chat with you about your area’s transport needs, and how a unified solution to technology and operations could deliver more effective DRT services. Put some time on our calendar below!
