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Mobility Marketplace pilot to take off in Queenstown
A mobility marketplace pilot has collaboration from the NZ Transport Agency, regional tourism organisation Destination Queenstown, Otago Regional Council and the Queenstown Lakes District Council.
It offers tourists coming to Queenstown access to easy, real time transport options they can trust, providing alternatives to driving a car themselves.
The scoping and business plan for the collaborative project began in January 2017, with the pilot’s app launching in early August and running until the end of the ski season, NZTA connected journeys solutions director Martin McMullan says.
The pilot will launch a real time platform which will act as a marketplace with a user facing app that tourists can download on their IOS or Android mobile device.
“NZTA is providing the infrastructure for the other parties to build this mobility as a service app for the end users,” says McMullan.
“While Queenstown will be the initial test bed during the busy winter ski season for the mobility service app, there are plans to take the learnings from this pilot and apply them to another project in Auckland later in 2017,” he says.
One of the programme’s objectives is to relieve some of the traffic congestion in and around Queenstown, enhanced by the influx of a million or so tourists each year.
Giving people the choice of readily found, easily used transport options all in one place to get to ski fields and other destinations means transport modes like local bus services, ski shuttles, taxis, electric bikes, ride-share, water taxis, and even Heli-ski services all become very accessible options for visitors.
Personalised journey planning for more than 40 key tourism destinations will initially be available in the mobility app, with a journey planning function to support it.
McMullan observes that many tourists coming to Queenstown choose to hire cars by default as they are unaware of the other options available to them, and language is often a barrier to that.
“When travelling in different countries, people don’t like the unknown – especially when they don’t speak the native language. Finding the bus stop is the easy part, but knowing where to get off is not. So people discount it as an option,” says McMullan.
“This mobility app is currently being developed in English, Mandarin and Japanese with other languages to follow in later releases to alleviate the language challenge.”
McMullan says a trip to Japan showed him that it is possible to use public transport as a tourist in a foreign country.
“The tourism experience and the public transport experience in Japan were very easy and very reliable, so that’s why I used it,” he says.
“And that’s what we’ve got to bring to Queenstown and bring to wider New Zealand. We need to test if this concept can relieve some of the traffic congestion in Queenstown and other regions by giving people informed choices. High-quality, safe transport options, they can easily find, pay for it on the provider’s infrastructure and then consume, all in one place.”
“If it’s a high-quality choice and a reliable premium product, then people will use it. The Queenstown project is a very early version of what we would call a mobility marketplace,” says McMullan.
“Why have one car going up to the skifield with two people onboard, when there’s room for three more. How can we let people know that space is available and safe to use,” he says.
McMullan says the mobility marketplace will offer people real time choices based on their needs and requirements, from the cheapest option to the quickest option, to the most environmentally sustainable options. It’s up to the user.
He says the majority of people movements in Queenstown are tourism related, so the collaboration wants to see how the app will impact people’s behaviours and the demands on the various transport operators that can be accessed through it.
This pilot will sit alongside the capital work programmes in development for Queenstown.
“Designing the system while embracing emerging technology will inevitably provide a people centred, system approach to efficiently and safely moving people around.”
“We’ll take the learnings and infrastructure from Queenstown for the Auckland pilot later in 2017 which will target increasing vehicle occupancy in and around the airport terminals,” says McMullan.
“We’ve got a lot of business travellers jumping into taxis in the city, creating a lot of vehicles driving to the airport with only the driver and one person inside, so how can we get a greater volume of passengers to their destination without taking up more space on the road,” asks McMullan.
“Once again, we are trying to maximise volume and capacity of our transport system, not the physical space. Ultimately, the outcome we want is to provide more choice for the transport user, and if this is successful then we will see the result of reduced traffic,” he says.
“Mobility as a service (MaaS) cannot be done to people; it’s got to be with them, and we can manage demand by giving people an informed choice,” he says.
