SARRASIN - Rural car service for registered users
Overview
Background & policy context:
In rural areas, public transport services are sparse. In order to meet transport needs more efficiently, a combination of private vehicle and public transport is needed.
The goal is to enhance the existing transport supply and to find innovative solutions for services to rural areas or low-density areas with optimal mobility for all and sustainable development at lower cost.
The project focused on the rural area around Abbeville in the Picardy region of northern France, where there has been a relative lack of public transport.
Objectives:
The project goal was to establish, for the rural areas around Abbeville, a structure of multimodal and intermodal services combining different components of mobility in a unitary system: public, private, collective, individual, organised and improvised mobility.
The system relies on the FILINFO information centre of the public transport operator Kéolis (one of the project partners and funders).
The aim is to provide a solution to the isolation of captive (low mobility) people (young, elderly, disabled, low income households) in the Abbeville area by experimenting and testing a new mobility service. This system relied on the existence of a major mobility and public transport actor (Kéolis) in order to provide additional supply to urban and interurban public transport.
Methodology:
The project included the following tasks:
- Study of the mobility needs
- Proposition of a system operation
- Feasibility study
1) Study of mobility needs.
The first task consisted of evaluating the mobility needs of the area. It consisted of studying the demographic context, the mobility flows (trip-to-work, trip-to-school, other journeys), and elaborating a quantitative and qualitative study of potential clientele.
To estimate the number of individuals potentially interested in a new mobility service, the number of employed persons who work outside the town was identified for each household, which gave an estimation of the number of vehicles who left home each morning and were therefore not available for the rest of the household during the day.
40% of inactive people (such as senior citizens) have either no vehicle in the household, or someone in the household has a vehicle but which is not available during the daytime (e.g. the other person takes the car to work). In total - including young people, inactive and elderly who have no car available during the day - more than 8,500 individuals (19% of the rural population outside Abbeville) could potentially be interested in a mobility service in the study area (excluding Abbeville town itself). As for the qualitative study, interviews with institutional stakeholders were held to determinate the actions to undertake, the marketing campaign to adopt, etc. To test the concept of the new transport service "SARRASIN" two focus groups comprising all persons residing in the geographical area were organised within 15 to 30 km from Abbeville.
The ideal service for the proposed geographical area must meet the following requirements:
- continuous (every day and every moment)
- responsiveness (acceptance of contingencies)
- accessibility and flexible
- close to public services and buildings (e.g. town halls, medical facilities, etc)
- vehicles adaptable to users and applications (number of places, the importance of safety).
2) Proposition of a system operation.
The service consists of:
- An operator (the "mobility centre" – mobility management service)
- A network of stations (platforms)
- Points (pickup and deposit) outside stations
- Infrastructure (communication system and information)
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