City Characteristic
A city with 10K population and 5K students.
With just one main road that connects station to the city and two campuses (1 & 2 )
The university has some buses
Some students + citizens carpool
In summer, there are tones of tourists in this area
There is only one road that connects main train station to the campus and city
Payment problem and collecting money for different modes of transportation
Key Challenges
Olivia is an English student at Toronto university and lives in Richmond hill. Every day she has to leave her house for a long walk to the bus stop, then wait up to 40 minutes for a bus to take her to Finch station where she uses the subway to reach downtown Toronto. While as a student Olivia can’t afford a car, her everyday journey takes at least 1 hour and 30 minutes. As a student, Olivia needs reliable transportation to get to her classes on time.
Tony on the other hand is a web developer who works at a small startup in downtown Toronto. Because his house is far away from any bus station, he drives his car down to Toronto every day, in order to get to his workplace, but the highway from Richmond hill to downtown Toronto is always jammed through rush hours, and it takes almost 1 hour and 50 mins for him to get to the office. Somedays Tony uses Finch station as a parking space in order to cut some expenses and save time by getting on the train, but the problem is that Finch’s parking space is loaded most of the time, so it’s not a reliable choice for him. Tony has to pay his car’s and parking bills every month, it’s not cheap, but it seems he has no choice, he needs a car because he lives in the suburbs
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 cars and spend time in traffic or to wait a long time for a bus that takes too much time to get to the destination, most people who use public transit are living in large census metropolitan areas
- Every road to the main public transit Hub has heavy traffic during rush hours, so it takes too much time and cost using a private car every day. Prior to the pandemic, 75% of trips were made with private cars also, the corona pandemy decreased the use of public transport by 76%
- People would prefer to use their own car all the way down to downtown which increases traffic almost everywhere
- High waiting time because of the small fleet size
Limited parking space in the main transit Hubs, especially during weekdays
- When everyone uses their own car to get to the main transit hub, they would have to deal with limited parking space
- This limitation means that only a limited part of people can use public transportation from there to the downtown
- Parking spaces are usually expensive
High reliance on personal car
- With low coverage of public transit, people depend a lot on their cars. High reliance on personal cars means more congestion and Pollution, and more cost forced on families, thus more social inequity
No proper public transportation on weekends
- People who don’t own a car have limited access to big shopping centers or recreation facilities
Low-density area
- Public transit would be a huge cost and inefficient plan
Weekends
Goals
- Connect passengers from the city to the main transit hubs during rush hour
- Reduce travel time and cost
- Reduce demand for parking
Solutions
- A fixed and fast route from the city to the main transit hub, limited in pick up and drop off station, morning rush hour
- A fixed and fast route from the main transit hub to the city, limited in pick up and drop off station, evening rush hour
- Connecting people to the best public transport station with multimodal optimization to reduce the time and cost spent
- Smart DRT virtual stations, based on booked trips to reduce wait and trip time
- Smart DRT virtual stations, based on booked trips to reduce wait and trip time
Weekends
Goals
- Connect people to the shopping centers
- Connect people to the recreation facilities
Solutions
- On-demand service on weekends with two main destinations
- Connecting people to the best public transport station with multimodal optimization to reduce the time and cost spent
Smart DRT virtual stations, based on booked trips to reduce wait and trip time Using REKAB multimodal DRT planner, Olivia is able to book her trips based on her classes 7 days in advance. First, she has to walk 15 minutes to a pick up point near her house, then take DRT to the finch station where she gets on the subway to reach downtown Toronto to her university. With this solution she has a reliable plan every day to get where she wants with less time consumed. Getting back from campus she uses a train to reach finch station and then uses the best option based on live data to get to Richmond hill, will it be the bus, DRT, bike, or any combination of these options. Using REKAB multimodal solution can cut back Olivia’s time spent into less than 1 hour.
Tony needs to be at work every day at 9, so he can get the best use of recurring trip planning for the whole week, with this feature he shouldn’t be worried about when to go or what option to use every morning. The only thing that he should do is to plan his trip for all the days he needs and then REKAB multimodal trip planner will plan the best option using walking, biking, DRT, public transportation for him to get to his job with a reasonable amount of time and cost.
