Urban mobility is inherently multi-modal. A day in the life of the regular person living in an urban or intra-urban environment is no longer from A2B, but from A2B2C. There is tremendous economic potential in servicing, in a more flexible way, the mobility needs of people living in areas of the urban landscape that are usually ignored by conventional public transportation.
It is estimated that in the next 30 years around 70% of the world’s population will live in cities, which means that the pressure on the urban transportation systems will increase resulting in bigger problems regarding the traffic overload, air pollution and lack of parking spaces. This new context will affect the quality of life and health of the entire urban society in a negative way.
Therefore, a shift towards a new way of transportation that solves the new problems of the cities is very important.
This is why Neobility is developing NeoBus, an affordable demand-responsive public transportation service for people who commute daily or occasionally. NeoBus is directly integrated with UrbanAir as a distinct layer of mobility (“UrbanBus”).
Main characteristics of “UrbanBus” are:
- Possibility to hail a minibus: open app enter your destination, get estimated price and estimated pick-up time;
- Pay the ride via the mobile app, enabling a streamlined customer experience: at the end of the ride the payment is managed via the app (based on the customer agreement given at the start of the ride);
- Unlike regular buses, UrbanBus will offer the possibility to book a ride on demand, as well as schedule rides for later;
- Possibility to give feedback about the ride experience at the end of the ride.
NeoBus overall goal is to offer users an improved travel experience through a single platform and mobile app to plan, book, travel and pay for transportation services suitable for both private and business purposes (B2C and B2B):
- Traffic: encouraging people to use alternative transportation vs personal vehicles will have a positive impact on overall city traffic; moreover, NeoBus solution is designed to set pick-up and drop-off points at maximum 5 minutes of walking from the starting point and towards final destination which means that NeoBus proposal is also better vs traditional car sharing solution (like Uber) which usually travel without passengers (for pick-ups) adding burden to the overall traffic;
- Pollution: NeoBus vision is to offer people a better environment to live in; this means that our algorithm is designed in such a way that the minibus fleet is optimal in order to serve the designated target population which translates in less pollution due to lower number of vehicles on the streets on top of the positive impact of people switching from personal vehicles to NeoBus;
- Parking spaces: offering people a real alternative for the personal vehicle will decrease the number of vehicles on the streets and resulting in lower need for parking spaces meaning also that people will find easier a place where to park;
- Safety: using the 5G infrastructure, onboard safety software will be able to receive uninterrupted data from various on road sensors which will provide real-time analysis of road conditions and behavior of other drivers and early warnings for any potentially dangerous changes on the road can be implemented;
- Travel experience: the passengers will no more have to pay attention to drive their vehicle and they will have time to enjoy the ride doing what they love: read, listen to music, watch a movie, etc. The minibuses will have around 10 seats arranged in such a way that all the passengers will have proper personal space, for both accessibility reasons and riding experience.