City Characteristic
Population: 208,379
Low coverage available public transport network/No public transport at all
Low density: 2004.4 ppl/km2
Area size: 100.8 km2 Ave. Temp in Winter: -4.1C
Where people who work in downtown live
Key Challenges
Darren lives in Richmond hill, he is a nurse in a hospital in downtown toronto. Everyday Darren wakes up at 5:30 to start his shift at 8:00 at the hospital. His journey to the hospital takes almost 1 hour and 40 mins everyday. Normally he uses his own car to get to work, but with the traffic and parking and car maintenance costs, it doesn’t seem to be the best option for him.
On the other hand, Allen owns a carpentry studio all the way down to north york. He uses his own car everyday to get to his studio. With the REKAB multimodal carpooling planner, Darren can walk to a place where Allen can pick him up with his car and drop him off to the finch station which is on his way to work, and then Darren would take the subway from finch to downtown toronto. With this plan, Darren can cut his trip time to three quarters and Allen can share his gas and car maintenance costs, and both of them get a chance to meet their neighbors in the city and have a partner to share the ride with.
One of the most important benefits that carpooling has for both the rider and passenger is that they can use the HOV(high occupancy vehicle) lane which is reserved for cars with more than 2 passengers, And parking spaces that are specially cheaper for carpooling to cut their costs and time spent.
Limited parking space in the main transit Hubs, especially during weekdays
- When everyone use their own car to get to the main transit hub, they would face with limited parking space
- This limitation means that only limited part of people can use public transportation from there to the downtown
- Parking spaces are usually expensive
No proper transportation to the main transit hubs or no transit at all
- There is only one bus from the inner city to the main public transit Hub or no bus, so people are forced to use personal car and spend time in traffic or to wait a long time for a bus that takes too much time to get to the destination
- Every road to the main public transit Hub has heavy traffic in rush hours, so it takes too much time and cost using a private car everyday.
- People would prefer to use their own car all the way down to downtown that increases traffic almost everywhere
- High waiting time because of the small fleet size
High reliance on personal car
- With low coverage public transit, people depend a lot on their cars. High reliance on personal cars means more congestion and pollution
- Only 2% of people used carpooling as a daily option in 2021 in Canada
Goals
- Connect passengers from city to the main transit hubs during rush hour
- Reduce single passenger car and demand for parking
- Reduce congestion and pollution
Solutions
- Connecting people to each other with multimodal carpool solution, and connect them to the optimal public transit station with multimodal trip planner
- Planning the whole trip to reduce wait time between different modes; also making the payment process easier
- Multimodal planning, which makes it easier and more flexible to match people for ride, no need to have the same origin or destination
- Multimodal planning, which makes it easier and more flexible to match people for ride, no need to have the same origin or destination
