TiPA: Transreport intelligent Passenger Assist for resilience during disruption

Transreport Limited is an innovative start-up developing disruptive software solutions connecting rail users to rail operators, which have evolved to focus on those facing challenges accessing the rail network, in order to democratise rail transport in the UK and beyond. The first of these is Transreport Passenger Assist, which is a novel solution for disabled passengers to either pre-book or dynamically make assistance requests at major stations. With increasing numbers of disabled customers now seeing rail travel as a real option due to improvements in accessibility, many mainline stations already now find themselves delivering a substantial number of assistance at peak times. Whilst clearly delivering the intentions of policymakers, the risk of not meeting this challenge will lead to unfulfilled assistance requests, with potentially negative effects on customer experience for those with diverse and complex disabilities and requirements. These impacts will be felt even more acutely during periods of disruption. For disabled passengers, even a small delay getting the right assistance can have far reaching effects on journey outcomes when a problem on the network arises. However, whilst it is usually the case that operators have access to the staff resource they need to deliver disabled passenger assistance and alternative services, they lack the information to effectively deploy them to the right place at the right time. Similarly, disabled passengers currently have no meaningful visibility of the potential impacts of the disruption they are facing. Directly addressing this challenge, Transreport and their partners from across the rail industry now target an innovative and transformational mechanism assisting operators to predict and better respond to the impacts of disruption on disabled passengers. With direct impacts on operational resilience, this novel platform will be configured, integrated and tested with operators and a cohort of disabled passengers through this project, to prove first-of-a-kind capability.