Speed 4


	Technology, transport & health

Automated GIS-based tools for planning home to school transport

A comparison of dedicated cloud based tools with system replacement. Although automated GIS map based routing tools for school transport have been available for over 15 years, hardly any UK local authorities have adopted them. This is because they have been far too expensive and too difficult to deploy; requiring that authorities totally replace their existing transport management systems. Kent County Council partnered with a European project named Send-To (Special Education Needs and Disabilities Transport Optimisation). The project aimed to provide a cloud-based automated focused routing tool. From this project has grown QRoutes, which is now available on a low cost subscription basis. Planners and Schedulers can pass lists of trips via a simpler file format and receive back the routed solution. Using QRoutes, Kent CC saved well almost £1.5m in costs associated with Special Education Needs pupil transport and are now applying it to their Mainstream School Transport provision. This talk considers the applicability of automated routing solutions to the UK school transport market and the new philosophy of providing focussed tools rather than replacement systems.

Jeff Duffell, QRoutes

Monitoring air quality and active travel impacts

An investigation into the long term benefits and unintended pitfalls of travel planning initiatives using the ten years of data collected through iTRACE, an online software suite used to monitor travel plans and collect actual travel behaviour. Authorities across the UK are working to promote an improvement in transport conditions for those living and working in their regions, delivering sustainable transport schemes and initiatives which address the key issues of congestion, public transport provision and convenient orbital movement. A significant number of these authorities, including those of West Yorkshire, Wigan, Brighton and Tyne & Wear, have used iTRACE as their monitoring tool, some since 2006. This talk will outline the data collection process, detail the information available for analysis and, through a combination of research on both national and local levels, explore what knowledge and conclusions can be drawn regarding some of the intended and unintended outcomes of Mobility Plans. The data collected through iTRACE is geo-coded and contains details of each commuters journey legs e.g. Walk 10 minutes to a bus stop, catch a bus for 10 minutes, meet a car-share partner and drive 15 minutes to my place of work. This data is also used to derive CO2, NOx and PM10 values for the non-active journey legs. The data will be displayed in a series of tables, charts and maps.

Dan Blanchet, Commercial Manager, iBase Systems Ltd

An urban test-bed for new technologies

Transport for Greater Manchester has been taking the lead in the delivery of the necessary foundations for an Intelligent Mobility approach to technology exploitation in support of making public transport an attractive, legible and simple option for residents, workers and visitors. The aim is to combine improved access to public and private transport movement across our network with wider ‘big data’ product solutions. This will support mobility management through offering accurate, real-time and relevant alternatives on all elements of mobility, including that of journey planning. Greater Manchester is also in the early stages of implementing radical new mobility opportunities, including talking bus-stops, smart place-lighting and connected tram accessibility. Moving towards the implementation of a Mobility as a Service transport package, Greater Manchester is acting as an urban test-bed for new technologies to be trialled and implemented in an economically and socially complex city region.

Clare Cornes, Transport Strategist, Transport for Greater Manchester

Gamification: engaging inactive users and encouraging active travel

Gamification and ‘changing up’ of incentives is required to increase travel behaviour change over time, otherwise it will plateau after a few weeks. This was realised from the Better Travel project, a behaviour change programme which utilised a mobile app and digital currency to encourage people to take less solo car journeys and use more sustainable, multi-modal and active forms of travel. It was implemented between May and September 2016, delivered by BetterPoints Ltd to Birmingham City Council’s sustainability team as part of the Transition Cities Programme. 74% of people (N=46) said that they had taken the car less as a result of the programme, and 63% said their awareness of green and sustainable travel had increased. Multi modal travel and expanding incentives across new transport models such as car clubs and bike hire is an area with great potential, but requires further development in terms of API integration into booking systems and intelligent, automated qualification of transport choices.

Dan Gipple, CEO, Better Points

Cycling is essential for the success of Mobility as a Service (MaaS)

The rise of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) has highlighted that it is highly focused on motor-driven modes of transport at the base of the concept. Nextbike believes that this is a wrong approach as cycling – especially bike sharing – can act as glue, bringing closer other modes of transport. Secondary research shows that cycling is an ideal final mile solution for most people. Our own research also confirms this, with around 20% of all rentals originating or ending at a transport hub such as train or bus station. We have teamed up with several MaaS providers, including MaaS Global (based in Helsinki, Finland) to promote cyclist as a viable and desirable mode of transport for people. By working together with such providers, we ensure that cycling is not neglected and is fully integrated in planning of such services. What we have to understand, however, the paradigm of competition is not healthy for the future of economy, and rather than 'compete for customers' we have to 'share the customers'. Through this, we allow customers to have more choice and convenience in planning their journeys, whilst at the same time attractine new customers. At nextbike, we believe that through MaaS services, we will also notice consumer behavior changes that will also benefit other transport providers. This talk will offer a real life case study of nextbike experience in the UK and elsewhere.

Sebastian Schlebusch, Director, Nextbike UK

Beat the Street

Intelligent Health delivers ‘Beat the Street’ with the aim of getting a whole community more physically active. Beat the Street turns the town into a real-life game where players register their walking and cycling journeys by tapping a smartcard on around 220 RFID readers called ‘Beat Boxes’ placed on lampposts around the town. In February 2016, Beat the Street was launched in Isleworth, sited in the London Borough of Hounslow in West London, and recently in September the game was re-launched across the whole of Hounslow. Matched data was available for 244 people from the Isleworth registration and the Hounslow registration 7 months later. During this time the average number of days that people were physically active increased from 4 to 5. Furthermore, focusing on the inactive, an enormous shift in physical activity was discovered for those reporting 0 or 1 days of physical activity in February compared to their self-reported levels of physical activity 7 months later.