Detailed description (English): With more than 210,000 inhabitants, the city of Padua had no night public transportation solution. Conventional buses stopped their service at 9:00 pm, putting a strain on the city's highly developed night-time activity. The implementation of an evening and night-time transportation solution becomes a necessity to improve the well-being of the population and preserve the attractiveness of the university campuses which attract some 60,000 students.
To meet these challenges, the local public authorities, in collaboration with the University of Padua, decided to experiment a Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) solution. Padam Mobility technology is chosen to operate a first service in partnership with Busitalia Veneto, the urban and extra-urban transit operator of the province of Padua. The Night Bus service is created in January 2019.
To meet the rapid deployment objectives of its Paduan clients and partners, Padam Mobility has mobilized its teams to offer in just 8 weeks a relevant shared mobility solution that functions smoothly and that the people of Padua can be proud of.
User and driver apps as well as a dedicated support in Italian have been developed.
A local project manager was assigned to the project. As a privileged interlocutor with the clients, he ensured the specific local social and geographical characteristics of the territory were taken into account. As the city of Padua has many narrow streets that do not allow the circulation of "standard" vehicles, an in-depth urban mapping work was carried out to guarantee the efficiency of the service from its launch.
With a fleet of 4 vehicles, the service is configured following a free-floating service design for more flexibility. The itineraries are defined and optimised by Padam Mobility's algorithm according to the users' bookings, who can access the service every day at the following times:
Target group(s): Students, and night commuters
Objectives: Make mobility more flexible, accessible, and fuel efficient
Partner: BusItalia Veneto