Belleville Transit On-Demand Night Bus Pilot Made Permanent by City Council

Toronto, Canada, January 30, 2019 --(PR.com)-- On January 14th Belleville City Council voted to make Belleville Transit’s late-night Route 11 bus service pilot a permanent part of transit operations. According to Quinte News, the city allocated $220,000 and made two new vehicle operator positions. This is a culmination of a transit experiment that started five months ago. The pilot began in 2018 as a night time service operating between 9 PM - 12:30 AM where transit riders have access to a rider portal, allowing them to book bus trips on demand or in advance from any device that has internet connection. Belleville buses no longer stayed on fixed routes during that time period but instead travelled between bus stops based on rider demand.

So far the new service has seen ridership growth of 300%, over 2700 people have signed up and made accounts in the new app with a further 1033 anonymous accounts made. The Belleville’s council congratulated transit manager Paul Buck for the ongoing success of the pilot and comments highlighted how the on-demand service has made it easier for workers and students to get around the entire city of Belleville during the late night. The on-time percentage of the service has been 94%.

Pantonium is the technology company behind the application and provider of the cloud based artificial intelligence that controls when and where Belleville’s night buses go. Pantonium’s CEO Remi Desa has this to say about the effectiveness of the new service: “By freeing the buses from fixed routes and servicing only where riders wanted to go, the system services over 30 people per hour on a rural night bus route – a figure in line with daytime urban ridership on New York City buses.”

Going into 2019 Pantonium and Belleville Transit are partnering with universities and research institutions to use the data generated by the service to discover the impacts on ridership, car usage and social mobility. Pantonium is also looking to expand the use of on-demand transit software to other municipalities in North America.