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B2B Demand Responsive Transport for Business Travel in Rural Areas?

For individuals, car-sharing, cycling and public transport are already established as solid options for combating auto-soloing, but what about business travel? What kind of solutions are available to companies to ensure a connection from a station or airport to a sparsely populated area? Here’s a closer look at a new offering: TOTOOM.

The TOTOOM Private Initiative

In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the so-called “white zones” force business travellers to use their private car or hire a vehicle to get around. In these sparsely populated areas, demand is scattered and cannot be concentrated on fixed public transport lines.

In the absence of a reliable alternative, the TOTOOM start-up is tackling the issue in 2023. After consulting with local and regional mobility organising authorities (AOM), it identified the missing links in the public transport system throughout the region. At the same time, the new mobility project incorporates the problems of business travel.

TOTOOM provides a shared shuttle service linking stations and airports with rural areas.

How Does This Shared Transport Service Provide Connections to Stations and Airports?

The demand-responsive transport service pools work-related journeys within an area made up of a network of companies. To do this, the company uses Padam Mobility’s solutions. Our algorithms optimise these journeys to ensure that the vehicles are as full as possible. Totoom has a fleet of 5 fully electric shuttles. Each shuttle can carry up to 7 people.

For example, the service enables employees of the same company to book the TOTOOM service to travel to or from Puy-en-Velay-Loudes airport on demand. Similarly, this new type of DRT connects the areas surrounding Lyon and Saint-Étienne airports.

What Does Padam Mobility Offer?

Since 2014, Padam Mobility has been offering tools to facilitate shared transport where conventional public transport would be too costly for the public sector.

In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, the challenge was to offer a shared shuttle service for professionals. To adapt to actual demand, Totoom uses our software suite. This is based on intelligent, flexible algorithms for optimising routes and vehicle occupancy rates. This is how Totoom proposes to meet the need to reduce the cost of business travel for employees in business parks.

You might also like to read: Royal Geographical Society Symposium 2024: Geography in Practice – The Future of Rural Mobility