Real-time data-driven insights to drive sustainable travel & bus network resilience post-Covid-19

Buses running to schedule is a perennial problem faced by transport authorities. Major cities including Cambridge have struggled to gain insights into the root cause of bus delays, in order to better manage and operate wider transport services and encourage more sustainable use of public transport.

However, step changes to road usage due to Covid-19, including increased pavement sizes, new cycle routes and changing travel behaviours mean that public transport operation is set to become more challenging than ever.

While Covid-19 has temporarily reduced the occupancy of buses across the network, longer-term bus use remains a vital pillar in transport policy. Understanding how the bus network is performing can provide key insights into how it can be improved in an agile and responsive fashion, encouraging higher bus occupancy, and informing policy to getting more cars off the road.

One of the underlying impacts of Covid is that it provides a unique opportunity to understand network dynamics as all buses have been operating more smoothly due to lockdown and fewer vehicles on the road. However as the lockdown continues to lift and more vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists return to our roads, pinch points are already beginning to occur again.

In this project, Alchera will work closely with the Smart Cambridge programme; an initiative part of the Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) a body which includes, Cambridgeshire County Council, Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and the University of Cambridge and was set up to deliver the Greater Cambridge City Deal.

Working closely together with Smart Cambridge, Alchera will develop a fully integrated tool to identify when buses are running out of sync with the expected timetables. These data insights will identify pinch-points in order to inform operational decision making & wider transport policy for the better running of bus services in Cambridgeshire, in turn encouraging the adoption of sustainable travel. This work will build on Alchera's capabilities providing software tools and machine learning via our Intelligent Data Hub, and provide integration to existing workplace tools such as Power BI used by Local Authorities across the UK, to enable them to make data-driven decisions.