Tyne and Wear touted for mobility testbeds

INNOVATION

Nexus wants to collaborate with new mobility firms to make Tyne and Wear a testbed for transport innovations.

The Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive has announced a market engagement exercise for companies and experts involved with flexible on-demand transport, aggregator applications, low and zero emission vehicles, and autonomous vehicles, as well as broader transport innovations.

 Mike Scott, Nexus’s head of bus services, said: “Our intention is to be a test bed for partnerships and projects that deliver new mobility services, complementing and adding value to existing public transport networks.  

“We believe Tyne and Wear is big enough to provide a meaningful and scalable test bed, but not so big that the effects of investment in transport innovation are hard to identify and isolate.”

The PTE’s early market engagement invitation identifies five areas of interest.

1. The provision of flexible on-demand transport services: bookable flexible transport services that extend the reach of existing mass transit networks in Tyne and Wear.  “These flexible transport services should add value to existing networks in the short term and not simply replace them, unless there is a strong case to do so that matches the needs of current users.”

2. The provision of transport aggregator applications: ideas to bring journey planning, real-time journey tracking and journey payment/ticketing into a single mobile application across a full range of public transport, on-demand transport, taxi, cycle hire and car hire options. “We are equally interested to hear how a transport aggregator app might be extended in its functionality to include other lifestyle benefits. 

Nexus has already commenced a market engagement exercise to develop a Metro journey planning and payment app – we see the transport aggregator app as the logical next step in the development of a tool that facilitates intelligent and informed journey choices and ticketing.”

3. The provision of low/zero emission buses: Tyne and Wear could offer a proving ground for new technologies that could be adopted by commercial operators. “We are already actively pursuing funding opportunities for these vehicles in conjunction with operators, we would welcome ideas from suppliers and innovators on how they can be introduced as rapidly as possible.”

4. The role of autonomous vehicles in the delivery of transport services across all modes of road transport.

5. Any other transport innovation that can be shown to assist Nexus in achieving its public transport objectives. These may be innovations that are still at the concept stage, or innovations that are proven elsewhere but not yet present in Tyne and Wear. 

The invitation closes on 31 July.