3120. A review on the state of practice of demand responsive transport in the UK
Invited abstract in session WD-59: Urban Mobility II, stream Transportation.
Wednesday, 14:30-16:00Room: Liberty 1.14
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Julia Bennell
|
| Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds | |
| 2. | Chiara Calastri
|
| Institute of Transporation Studies, University of Leeds | |
| 3. | Christine Currie
|
| School of Mathematics, University of Southampton | |
| 4. | Rym M'Hallah
|
| Engineering, King's College London | |
| 5. | Shobhit Saxena
|
| University of Leeds |
Abstract
The need for demand responsive transportive (DRT) in the UK public transport ecosystem has been long identified, with the first service implemented in the early 1980s. Despite such early initiation and a consistent push from the UK government, DRT remains confined to serving the needs of rural areas without any significant penetration in urban regions. In this article, we investigate the key challenges in broadening the scope of DRT from a rural alternative mode to a mainstream urban and rural mode of transport. The paper draws from the published literature and from the experience of DRT providers in practice. First, we review the literature and identify the need for new methods and approaches that enable a sustainable transformation of DRT. We focus on the social and operational challenges associated with designing a financially sustainable DRT service considering topics on both demand and supply aspects. Second, we report on a comprehensive discussion with stakeholders, including the experience of current DRT providers in the UK and user-specific focus. Subsequently, we qualitatively evaluated how DRT can supplement gaps in the current transport provision. Third, we contextualize the challenges we identified in DRT operations in other countries to highlight potential learning and new policy-specific solutions. Finally, we share our conclusions on what is needed to provide a more effective and efficient DRT service that caters to a wider population in the UK.
Keywords
- Transportation
- Practice of OR
Status: accepted
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