“The pilot provided us with understanding of how an on-demand service could complement traditional public transport,” says Tero Anttila, the Director of Public Transport Department at HSL. “Our cooperation with ViaVan has been good, and we look forward to analyzing the results of the pilot together during the spring in order to conclude what we have learned.”
“ViaVan's mission is to provide cities with dynamic, on-demand technology to expand access to public transport and reduce the number of private vehicles on the road,” says Chris Snyder, CEO of ViaVan. “The strong results from our pilot in Espoo show the power that smart, shared mobility services can have to significantly improve connectivity in the Helsinki region, without the need for a private vehicle.”
The user experience of the service was good, with vehicle wait times under 10 minutes on average, and efficient and convenient routing powered by ViaVan’s mobile app and technology. The service was used for both commuting and traveling to leisure activities, and more than 38 percent of rides were first-and-last mile stretches to and from train and metro stations in the service area.
The on-demand ride-sharing service was part of HSL’s IdeaLab project. The project had several goals such as reducing private vehicle usage, serving multiple leisure and commuting use cases, improving accessibility to public transport and shortening journey times.
More than 16,000 rides were taken with the service, with more than 1,500 unique riders using the service. Detailed ridership figures will be published in the final report due to be released during the spring after the pilot has ended.
This was the second on-demand service HSL has tried as part of its public transport services. In the service area – in Eastern Espoo – no changes were made to the regular public transport services because of the pilot, and public transport services in the area will operate as before after the pilot ends.
Winner of the IdeaLab competition
The ViaVan on-demand ride-sharing service was one of the winners in the 2018 IdeaLab competition organized by HSL. The aim of the competition was to find new innovations for mobility services in the future. ViaVan, alongside the other winner, an electric scooter service which operated in Vuosaari in summer 2019, were both granted 500,000 euros to run the service.
The on-demand ride-sharing service was launched in Espoo on 16 September 2019, and the areas of Matinkylä and Olari as well as the Leppävaara swimming hall were added to the service area during the fall.
After the six-month pilot ends as scheduled on March 14, HSL and ViaVan will analyze the final results for a report that will be released in the spring.
