Supporting rural communities through flexible integrated transport services Chukwuemeka David Emele, Nagendra R. Velaga, Cheng Zeng, Nir Oren, Steve Wright, Timothy J. Norman, John D. Nelson dot.rural Digital Economy Research Hub; University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK {c.emele, n.r.velaga, c.zeng, n.oren, s.d.wright, t.j.norman, j.d.nelson}@abdn.ac.uk ABSTRACT In rural areas, transport service availability is limited and as a result rural passengers face a range of challenges accessing basic amenities such as healthcare. Meeting the transport needs of rural communities with conventional public transport would require services with frequent schedules and widespread coverage; such an approach is financially unjustifiable for the passenger numbers attainable. Consequently, flexible transport services have been employed. However, many such services in rural areas are stand- alone, rigid, inefficient, costly and only offer passengers limited travel options. We propose a model of flexible integrated transport services, which can provide a desirable level of flexibility for passengers to express preferences for factors such as modes of transport, routes, and time of travel while allowing different services to be integrated in order to improve performance and efficiency. This paper presents a novel flexible integrated transport system that addresses some of these issues with the aim to aid passengers in more easily accessing basic amenities. 1. INTRODUCTION Rural areas and communities in remote locations experience a range of challenges associated with accessibility and mobility. These challenges arise as a result of poor accessibility to rural areas, highly uncertain demand and supply of transport, lack of real-time communication/information to and from users, small number of service providers, little or no co-ordination among service providers, and limited availability of transport services to basic amenities such as hospitals, shopping, and education [1]. These challenges impact on the rural population with huge implications on people with disabilities, children, older people, the mobility impaired, and people who do not have access to a personal car [2]. Meeting the transport needs of rural communities with fixed route public transport would require widespread coverage and services with frequent schedules; such an approach is financially unjustifiable for the passenger numbers attainable. Against this background, flexible transport services (FTS) have been employed as a promising solution in many locations across the world [3, 4, 5, 6]. However, many of these are stand-alone services usually designed to cater for a specific group of passengers or meet a specific need (see Figure 1). In general, such rural FTS are rigid, inefficient, costly and offer passengers limited travel options. We propose a flexible integrated transport system (FITS), which can provide a level of flexibility for passengers to express preferences for factors such as special assistance, modes of transport, routes, service provider, time of travel, and payment options while allowing different services to be integrated in order to improve performance and efficiency [7]. Figure 1: Transport services in rural areas [1] 2. IMPACT FITS is particularly applicable to rural areas, where there is limited availability of conventional transportation services. One of the ways in which FITS will assist the rural population is by integrating different modes of transport to provide more sophisticated, comfortable and cost effective transport options to passengers. Such an approach will facilitate flexible transport services in terms of routes, time (i.e. start, waiting and travel times), type of vehicle, choice of provider, cost, etc. The FITS platform operates as a virtual transport marketplace where different transport services are integrated and all service providers co-ordinate with one another to create satisfactory transport options for passengers. The FITS platform plays the role of a trusted third-party to whom transport offers and requirements are sent, which then solves the allocation problem by simultaneously considering both passengers' and operators' constraints and requirements. 3. METHODOLOGY The research team at dot.rural is working in partnership with a number of stakeholders across the North-East of Scotland including local councils, FTS providers, and the Grampian Health Transport Action Plan (HTAP) team. Surveys and consultations have been conducted with stakeholders to gather user-centric information, which has influenced the development of the FITS platform. Important findings from the surveys confirm that passengers want more flexible transport options; operators want to reduce running costs and develop business opportunities; and authorities are anxious to achieve co-ordinated rural transport services (see [1]). 4. FITS PLATFORM In this section, we discuss the design and implementation of a