On April 9, 2021, we hosted Part 1 of our 3-part webinar series about On-Demand Transit with the City of Edmonton. If you missed it, don’t worry! Let’s get you caught up with On Demand Transit as a Solution for your City.
Here was the agenda for Part 1:
Why On-Demand Transit (ODT)?
- What problems did the City of Edmonton need to solve?
- What other problems can ODT address
- Cost-benefit analysis
Service Delivery Decisions
- Where, when, and how
- Contracted vs. in-house
- Creating an RFP and contract
Council Buy-in / Approval Process
- Ridership and cost estimates
- Service metrics, goals, and cost metrics
Opposed to traditional route-based services, On Demand transit consists of dynamic routes on a booking-based system. Customers book a pickup and a drop-off, and the automated system plans out the best route to optimize time and space on the bus.
In 2017, Edmonton discovered a need to rethink how public transit looks in Edmonton which meant planning a whole new bus network. This initiated the development of the Edmonton Transit Strategy that would be planned and prepped for a launch in 2020. In the discovery phase, some of the major challenges were getting routes to developing neighbourhoods sooner, creating more effective transit services in the outskirts of the city, and bringing transit to areas where route-based transit was not working. Through extensive research, the City of Edmonton discovered that On Demand transit, may be the solution.
After 3 years of research, public engagement, gender-based analysis, and planning, the service is finally ready to launch in May 2021. The research that went into the planning process informed 20% of decisions made later down the road in developing the service. This public engagement and analysis were crucial in gaining approval for this project.
Watch the webinar recording below, or visit our YouTube Channel.
Be sure to register for Part 2 of the webinar series on May 6, 2021.
