Ride to Rail – Padua Demo
About this good practice
The Ride2Rail project conducted a demo pilot in Padua, in which a Driver Companion and a Travel Companion apps were tested aiming at reducing traffic congestion, encouraging carpooling as a complement to public transport, improving the efficiency of public transport services, encouraging drivers travelling alone to share the capacity of their car with other travellers and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The conjunction of the apps served at enabling a matchmaking of carpooling drivers and passengers, while additional features involved Preferences and Profile, Trip Planner, Trip Sharing, Navigation and others. Such systems were tested both in urban and rural areas around the city, to serve the commuters traveling to and from the University Ca' Foscari. By involving several urban and regional mobility service providers, including ride sharing, from Veneto Region, the demonstration proved the viability of the Travel Companion app and the Driver Companion app, in providing end-users with key recommendations to improve their mobility experience at all stages of the journey. In order to ensure as many testers as possible, a student engagement plan was structured. Throughout the demo, data were collected in full compliance of the GDPR. The initiative was superintended by FIT and RSF, the national railway infrastructure manager, a state-owned holding company; no participation of the Municipality was necessary, as there was no need to amend or add elements to the LPT.
Resources needed
The project received funding from the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme. The development of the Travel and Driver Companion app costs amount to 20.000€. No incentives were provided to Testers so as to encourage participation.
Evidence of success
Regarding the satisfaction index, users rated positively the usability of both apps higher than the target of 50 per cent. More in details, the Travel Companion was rated positively by 74 per cent of users, while the Driving Companion by 85 per cent. The feedback received was overall very positive. The Padua demonstration team, while interacting with users, had the opportunity to better understand their feeling towards the apps and the ecosystem, obtaining some recommendations for improvement.
Potential for learning or transfer
The demo in Padua demonstrated that functional, end-to-end, shared travel planning tools can facilitate the use of public transport for rural travel. Users of this experience shared their main perceptions and can now be considered as pillars for future developments. The demo, in boosting the combination of ride-sharing and mass transport, brought positive results regarding the perspective of multimodal travels. Although no targeted investigations were made for behavioural changes, during the demo it was highlighted a good respond in the changing of travel habits, deriving from the use of the apps and their related satisfaction index. Among the recognised results that can be exploited for other regions, the demonstration showed a conceptual model that evaluates the convenience of travel based on several relevant dimensions, exploiting the synergies of existing mobility offers, and a series of validated proof of concepts and business cases that predict future mobility scenarios.