LARGE SCALE DEMAND RESPONSIVE TRANSIT SYSTEMS - A LOCAL SUBURBAN TRANSPORT SOLUTION FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM

In many western countries, 'suburbanity' is an expanding phenomenon. This is not expected to change in the future, as consumers highly prefer such low-density dwelling locations. In low-density areas, it is getting more and more complex to provide local public transport in the classical way; time-tabled fixed route services show rising deficits and are insufficiently competitive with individual car use. Recently in the Netherlands, a study was carried out examining three options for transport systems in suburban settings. The shared-taxi system was demonstrated to be well placed for success. Due to legislation in favour of persons with disabilities, almost 70 shared taxi services in the Netherlands nowadays are active in over 250 municipalities. Characteristics are demand responsive door-to-door service, and request by telephone only one hour in advance. Some services operate hundreds of thousands of trips a year. Many of these systems are also open for other user groups besides disabled people. This development is supported by legislation that makes it possible to use regular public transport funds and enables experiments with user subsidies. Effects of these measures are the subject of research. This paper reports the experiences of these large scale demand responsive taxi systems, like product characteristics, costs per passenger-trip, level of use and bottlenecks. It discusses whether application of new technology and new payment systems can help to overcome these bottlenecks and, if these up to date large scale shared taxi services are successful, might be the local suburban transport system for the next millennium. For the covering abstract see ITRD E105101.