Impacts of replacing a fixed public transport line by a Demand Responsive Transport system: case study of a rural area in Amsterdam

Abstract

The diffusion of the smartphone and the urban sprawl is pushing both private and public actors to revisit the concept of demand-responsive transport (DRT). This paper provides a historical overview of DRT experiences, understanding their pros and cons. In addition, it presents the case study of Mokumflex, a 12-month DRT pilot program that replaced the regular bus service in low-density areas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on a close collaboration with the private enterprise that operated the service and also with the local bus operator, we performed an empirical before and after comparison. These insights help to understand the impacts of DRT systems and support (future) design of DRT and public transport. A set of indicators was chosen for the intermodal comparison: travel distances, ridership, costs, Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions and population’s perception. Ridership dropped from 78.1 passengers/ day to 15.9 passengers/ day, however, for being “demand-tailored”, passenger-km reduced even more, going from 1252.8 km/ day to 136.6 km/ day, hence reducing the costs and GHG emissions per passenger. In regards to population’s perception, the system enjoyed a good evaluation.