New web application for young travellers in Scotland

Scotland’s first mobility as a service (MaaS) web application will be piloted in Dundee and Fife in the autumn of 2017 with 16-25 year olds.

‘NaviGoGo’ is seeking to solve many of the transport issues that young people face and provide a real alternative to owning a car or relying on lifts.

During co-design research for the project, young people identified safety, complicated timetables and unclear fare structures as some of their main concerns.

NaviGoGo offers streamlined and personalised information, payment and fulfilment for trains, taxis, buses, walking, car clubs and bike schemes – all in one single hub. This is to increase safety, simplify timetables, join up different modes of transport and help young people to find the cheapest way to complete their journey.

David Smith, NaviGoGo Project Manager at ESP Group said “We’re very interested in the new MaaS approach, but are keen to see it tailored to specific markets and people. Our NaviGoGo consortium wants to revolutionise how young people travel and how they relate to, use and combine transport modes and services to meet their unique lifestyle needs. NaviGoGo aims to boost ridership of public transport and other shared modes by creating a generation of travellers who don’t just immediately jump in the car as their default transport mode.”

Key features of NaviGoGo will include: a personalised journey planner with fare calculator responsive to a user’s profile and entitlements, a payment/fulfilment platform and a forum for users comments and feedback on different operators. NaviGoGo will also match individuals to deals and discounts and provide a taxi splitter tool.

An early version of NaviGoGo will be tested in a six-month trial from October 2017 to March 2018 in Dundee and Fife.

The consortium is led by ESP Group and includes Young Scot, the National Entitlement Card Processing Office, optimisation specialist Route Monkey, SYSTRA and Mudlark. Together, these organisations secured funding to develop the service from the ‘Enhancing the End-to-End Journey’ competition funded by Innovate UK.