Project Summary
The project will assess how the availability and affordability of transport for older and disabled people can be increased through making its organisation integral to the events it serves.
Project Achievements
The protype software – codenamed the Esoterix Brokerage System (EBS) – was developed and then tested on randomly generated demand for events held in different geographies, including rural, peri-urban and urban. The events themselves were based on realistic real-world scenarios defined by experts from partner organisations, the Centre for Transport and Society at the University of the West of England and ITP World.
The scenario pictured on the left is for an event where 25 people wanted transport. In this case a high proportion of trips could be provided by other attendees (blue), the rest being served by a community transport minibus (yellow) and a shared taxi (orange).
Conclusions
The project proved EBS did create cost-effective transport plans in multiple scenarios and geographies using suppliers with varying constraints and cost models. For example, it prioritised the selection of volunteer drivers over taxis, but also preferred a full shared taxi to largely empty community transport vehicle. The results also demonstrated the impact an event-with-transport booking platform could have if it nudged driving attendees to offer lift-shares.
