News update 26.10.2011

Open Days 2011 is over and Rural Transport Solutions workshop gain attention from 55 workshop participants all around Europe. From behalf of whole RTS team I would like to thank everyone interested on our project and its pilots. Workshop presentations are available from links below. Visit also on our Bambuser account and check video recorded during workshop http://bambuser.com/channel/rtsproject

RTS workshop programme Open Days 2011
RTS promotional poster

News update 7.10.2011

RTS partners are preparing international workshop arranged in annual EU Open Days 2011. Project partners present ideas how to start reform in rural transport services. 
Wigtownshire community transport in Dumfries and Galloway Jonh Nelson (SCO)
Village Bus - Moving society closer Henric Fuchs (SWE)

Open and interactive transport information Jaakko Rintamäki (FIN)

News update 11.8.2011

New improved rural transport services are ready for launch in most of the regions participating RTS. New services include low-cost and coordinated solutions to get better results with service quality and accessibility in rural and coastal areas of Northern Europe. RTS pilot section tells you more. 

News update 3.7.2011

RTS partners are developing best and accessible ways of delivering good quality public transport information in their regions. Some partners are planning to launch new service portals in their home regions to make sometimes disorganized public transport information more coordinated and accessible for regular and casual users. As the RTS partner regions are situated in sparsely populated north, sometimes internet connections aren't par with standards with metropolitan areas and other information channels are necessary to fill the possible IT-gaps. This brief study demonstrates to current service portals worldwide and also highlights the best practices, which are vital for usability if good public transport portal is going to introduced in RTS project.

Designing Public Transport Portal

Examples of Public Transport portals

Public Transport Portals: Best practices

News update 11.5.2011

Rural Transport Solutions partners assembled last week in a beautiful city of Dumfries Scotland. All regions and project managers have actively pushing pilot phase to reality. New services and products have been created and special task of RTS have always been concentrating solving problems in rural sparsely populated areas. RTS partners did major task mapping and analysing their transport services, now we're pushing the change in our regions.

These two presentation sets gives you a good idea what we're currently doing. Wild Cards are something extraordinary and out-of-the-box ideas, which are ongoing or services of the future in various parts of world. Wild Cards and institutions behind them are shaping the world of transport more human and with integrated connectivity to city/community infrastructure. These Wild Cards might produce ideas also for partnership organizations participating RTS.   

RTS pilot services and concepts

Dumfries and Galloway      (contact)

North Karelia     (contact)

East-Iceland     (contact)

Västernorrland     (contact)

Shetland Islands     (contact)

Wild Cards - Transport 2.0

MetroDRT (Aalto University)

GoSmart personalised travel planning (Dumfries and Galloway)

Alternative fuels (East-Iceland)
Personal Rapid Transport (Masdar city, Heathrow)

Collective DRT in Ånge

e-community plan for Pielinen Karelia

News update 13.4.2011

New rural transport services are commencing in Finland, Scotland, Iceland and Sweden. If you want to know more please visit RTS Pilots section of our webpage.

RTS partnership will present new solutions tackling the problems of distance, sparse population and aging in Open Days 2011 happening. Find out more about the event and 206 cities and regions which presenting their views and answers for challnges Europe is experiencing. Follow this link to Open Days webpage

News update 3.2.2011

Is it 2011 already? Yes and it has been so over a month. RTS started a year with preparing and further developing regional pilots. On Transnational front we had a meeting in Shetland Islands in the end of January. On the first day we made study visits to mainland and outer islands with the help of impressive ferry connections. Shetland Islands Council is doing major work to keep the islands and the communities connected http://www.shetland.gov.uk/. 

Our main target was to organize promotion workshop. We discussed shared ideas and experiences how to boost our pilots through marketing. Possibilities of Social media, electronic notification software, travel planning, personal travel profiles, promotional materials, newspapers, meetings with the locals are just few examples what RTS partners are going to do to promote transport pilots in 2011.     

Presentation slides available here

North Karelia   Jaakko Rintamäki
Västernorrland    Henric Fuchs
Dumfries and Galloway    John Nelson
East-Iceland    Inga Erlingsdottir
Pielinen Karelia (PIKES)    Heidi Tanskanen

Marketing and Communication    Kevin Moreland

Check our Facebook group for information

News Update 16.12.2010

Project meeting in Dumfries and Galloway Dec 1st to 4th 2010

Development needs of existing rural transport services and few concepts how to make transport schemes a little bit more organized and coordinated. Huge promises expected from Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) schemes, how to implement those in real life services?

Demand responsive transport experiences together with community transport success stories were presented in international conference in city of Dumfries. Regions involved in RTS compared their existing practices and preliminary ideas how to drive efficiency in and improve customer service by shifting from scheduled services to drt based services. DRT is generally more flexible way of delivering rural and thus also urban mass transit services. In rural context the sparsely populated areas, local road conditions and demographics create difficult context for public and third sector actors to organize economically viable transport services.

Though with better coordination, co-operation and DRT type of models there’s a new possibility to improve the existing services. Financial crisis and harsh conditions of public economy urges actors to work together. Public transport should be linked better to match variety of private and public services as crucial part of regional planning. Sectoral planning and sectoral budgeting creates segmented optimization which hinders customer service, marketing and service planning.  

Check presentations for further details

Robert Burns Centre, Dumfries

RTS backround and mission Jaakko Rintamäki

DRT in North Karelia Jaakko Rintamäki

DRT services Eric Stewart

DRT in Dumfries Douglas Kirkpatrick

Public Transport conditions in East Iceland Inga Erlingsdottir

DRT in Västernorrland Henric Fuchs

DRT in Pielinen Karelia Heidi Tanskanen

WCT as good practice Brian McIlwraith

GoSmart project in Dumfries Douglas Kirkpatrick

News Update 24.9.2010 (Village Car inauguration and transport conference)

Survey, analyze, plan, make it real!
Rural Transport Solutions project held meeting in beautiful autumn colored region of Västernorrland Sweden. One important part of the meeting was the inauguration of the first pilot designed in RTS project. County Council of Västernorrland and municipality of Ånge offers for the people living in small village called Kölsillre totally new way to use public transport services. Usually transport authorities and logistical specialists tend design how should the public transport services operate in practice. People, local inhabitants are the main user group of those services, but they can't usually participate in transport planning in very early stages. More inclusive ways of planning and delivering the services are needed - Village Car in Ånge might just be the solution for more inclusive transport planning.

Village car service was planned and implemented in close cooperation with local villagers and public sector actors. Recognizing the real needs of the people and targeting the proper service to fill the specified needs. Idea behind the Village Car is freedom. Traditionally the public transport services are based on specific routes and schedules. Village Car is making everything that unnecessary. In Kölsillre village it's the villagers who plan how their public transport service operates. Local inhabitants book the car through Internet based booking system. When ride has more than one user they can use the Village Car completely free without any pre-fixed schedule. Pictures and additional information is soon available.

Rural Transport Solutions project held invitational transport conference where transport professionals from public and private sectors give their views and ideas for continuing work of public transport development. Download presentations, check ideas and be free to use them in your community. Material also includes latest RTS greetings from Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Scotland.