Corporate Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, USA.

Overview

Following a competitive procurement, Liftango was selected to provide fixed-route and on-demand shuttle services at the Beaverton, Oregon corporate headquarters of a multinational, Fortune 100 corporation. Liftango is partnering with fleet operator WeDriveU to provide an integrated shared mobility service. The service combines fixed-route shuttles and an on-demand taxi service enabling employees to access and book trips on either service from one smartphone app.

Key Points:

• Five 3-passenger on-demand taxis
• Nine 16-passenger fixed-route shuttles
• Majority-electric fleet
• Over 10% of campus employees are registered app users
• Custom dual service (on-demand and fixed-route) app design
• Service includes both Driver and Passenger apps, as well as Operations Portal
• Servicing a ~9 square mile corporate campus with over 16,000 employees
• Passengers can book directly through the ap or contact either the fleet operator or a campus experience team member to make a booking on their behalf

The Problem:

Our client's Beaverton, Oregon global headquarters is a 20-square-mile service area with over 16,000 regular employees. Maintaining parking infrastructure that can facilitate tens of thousands of single-occupancy vehicle (SOV) trips every day is expensive and unsustainable. Additionally, this organization has set aggressive goals to reduce waste and carbon emissions drastically.

This organization needed to create an innovative, comprehensive transportation solution for their campus that could reshape employee transit patterns, improve job satisfaction, and reduce emissions while integrating seamlessly into their existing corporate campus experience.

The Solution:

Recognizing a need for innovation in both the public and private sectors, Liftango is the first shared mobility company to implement an integrated fixed-route and demand-responsive transit (DRT) solution in both Corporate Campus and Public Transport settings.

Our service design solution includes Liftango’s proprietary Fixed-Route On-Demand Options (FRODO) booking algorithm, which helps guarantee an optimal experience for every user while maximizing the efficiency and capacity of every vehicle. FRODO allows the fleet operator to direct on-demand booking requests to fixed-route shuttles when specific criteria are met; this allows the system to preference fixed-route trips in certain situations and prevents on-demand requests from reducing fixed-route patronage. Users that are given a fixed route rather than an on-demand booking are provided with trip planner functionality that makes it easy to navigate to the appropriate fixed-route stop and track the nearest shuttle.

FRODO also helps Liftango’s booking algorithm automatically offer on-demand trips to those users with accessibility requirements.  Whenever a passenger that requires any type of mobility assistance makes a booking, they are automatically offered an on-demand, wheelchair-accessible shuttle to take them anywhere on campus with no minimum trip distance required. Users can input mobility-assistance needs when setting up their profile, making it easy to provide the best mobility solution to every passenger.

By using Liftango's solution, employees and visitors at the campus can now reserve rides up to seven days in advance, and book on-demand trips through a smartphone app, by calling a dispatcher, or by speaking with a campus experience team member. The service is available from 7am to 7pm from Monday to Friday and uses single sign-on user authentication to ensure access is only available to users with verified credentials.

The Solution in Brief:

• Multi-modal, on-demand service that offers fixed route and on-demand options, integrates with local bike share as well as local public transport
• Nine 16-passenger shuttle buses and five wheelchair-accessible vehicles (WAVs)
• Majority electric fleet
• Custom-designed Passenger and Driver app
• Operations Portal allows for updates to fixed routes, stops, driver schedules, and more
• SSO integration

Results

In the Spring of 2022, the organization announced that its employees would begin returning to work on campus for three days a week. Between May and August of 2022:

• Fixed-route campus shuttles serviced nearly 10,000 passengers
• An additional 2,600 on-demand trips were completed
• 1.5% of all on-demand trips were completed by mobility-assisted users
• On-demand users booked more than 4trips per month on average
• The service provides complete network connectivity and supports a modal shift away from Single OccupancyVehicle (SOV) trips by serving as a first and last-mile connector for those employees commuting to and from campus using the local TriMet MAX light rail station - fixed-route shuttles transported more than 2,200 passengers from local light rail station stops to campus during morning service hours alone
• Fixed route stops were serviced once every 9.84 minutes on average, exceeding WeDriveU’s stated goal that no passenger should have to wait more than ten minutes for a fixed-route shuttle
• On-demand taxis traveled nearly 19,000 combined miles

Learnings:

The corporation utilizes the fleet operator WeDriveU, a subsidiary of major public transit operator National Express and a leading operator of shuttle transportation solutions for companies, universities, hospitals, and return-to-office initiatives, to operate a comprehensive, campus-wide service for employees and visitors. Liftango is the technology partner to WeDriveU, and both organizations work closely to continually innovate and provide much needed corporate transport solutions to the market.

Liftango and WeDriveU partnered to help co-design a platform that suited this organization’s unique needs. Ongoing, collaborative UX research uncovered essential features that were built into the solution design for Drivers, Passengers, and operations and administrative staff. Liftango’s Operations Portal and reporting structure help us suggest ongoing service design changes that optimize efficiency and minimize wasted vehicle hours, including changing stop locations, the number of drivers, vehicle capacity, and more.

Liftango and WeDriveU will continue to collaborate closely to meet the ongoing needs of this client and deliver a high service growth rate once a full return-to-work policy is issued.