REPORT | Mirai Share Co., Ltd.

business Niigata Kotsu Co., Ltd.

Tests with buses

Place	Around Shimo-machi, Chuo-ku, Niigata-city
Period	2 - 31 March 2020 (Only on weekdays)
Time	09:00〜17:00

Vehicle	Passenger Fare
Passenger	Light-duty low-floor bus ×2 (17 seats) Available for everyone
Fare	210 yen

Reasons for adopting SAVS and requests upon the introduction

"In Shimo-machi, an old town area in Chuo-ku, Niigata-city, due to the aging society, elderly citizens without their own cars rely more and more on buses to get to hospitals and supermarkets. However, it is not necessarily efficient to operate buses with fixed schedules and routes because passengers are on the decrease in proportion with the town's depopulation, and buses often run without passengers. Also, it is questionable whether the passengers can go to their desired destinations whenever they want because the bus routes are fixed. Therefore, we decided to conduct verification tests of SAVS, hoping that the on-demand transportation can help us operate our services efficiently and improve the convenience of transportation".

Things they realized by implementing SAVS after conducting verification tests

"As we use buses that we normally operate for service, it is difficult to run freely within the area so we can only drive on a limited number of roads. Moreover, in some places, it is hard to park the buses for a long time. What is vital in streamlining transportation is to run the shortest routes within this net of roads in response to mobility demand. It is also important to choose bus stops where passengers can get on and off. We repeatedly conducted operation tests and field tests, considering safety at the same time, so that our operation can keep up with changes in running routes proposed by SAVS in real-time. "

business Hiragishi hire Co., Ltd.

Streamlining allocation of vehicles

Place	Toyohira-ku, Sapporo-city
Period	-
Time	-

Vehicle	Standard sized car
Passenger	-
Fare	-

Reasons for adopting SAVS and requests upon the introduction

Our company's motto is to give the highest priority to community-based taxi service to keep citizen's transportation running. However, we receive a lot of demand that exceeds the number of vehicles and drivers every day. As we accept reservations from citizens a few days in advance, we cannot respond to requests such as "please dispatch a vehicle from now" because all the vehicles are already reserved. This situation has led to a lost opportunity and inconvenience for customers. It is our current challenge to dispatch available vehicles efficiently and respond to the needs of more and more customers.

Things they realized by implementing SAVS after conducting verification tests

Based on reservation data in the past, we calculated order-combinations in picking up passengers by using SAVS simulation. As a result, we found out that we can decrease the number of cars allocated for reservations to less than a half. As we can now use the remaining vehicles to respond to requests such as "please dispatch a vehicle from now", we are now expanding the use of SAVS to streamline our taxi operation and receive more requests from customers.

other Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co., Ltd.

Using shared transportation instead of our own cars to commute.

Place	Komatsu-shi
Period	2020/2/20 ～ (Weekdays only)
Time	Departure time, departure time

Vehicle	3 jumbo vehicles
Passenger	Komatsu Branch Employee
Fare	-

Reasons for adopting SAVS and requests upon the introduction

"In regional hub cities, one of the issues of regional transportation is a chronic traffic jam in urban centers partially because the number of commuters who use their own cars remains at high levels. Besides, companies that adopt "commuting with my own car" system have various challenges, including management of their staff's safety, loss of workforce in case of an accident, legal and reputational risks. Staff is also concerned about causing an accident and mentally and physically fatigued. As "shared commute" is socially expected as a measure to solve these issues, we decided to consider the introduction of SAVS service.

Things they realized by implementing SAVS after conducting verification tests

"Before starting the shared transportation operation, we researched commute-pattern of our staff and analyzed their behavior by each weekday, such as commuting time and shopping on their way back to their home, so that we can calculate the number of vehicles necessary by using SAVS simulation. We were able to confirm that, if all the staff members stop commuting with their own cars and use shared taxis dispatched according to SAVS's plan, we can decrease the number of vehicles by more than 70% without significantly increasing our staff's commuting time. We expect that we can make significant contributions to society in relieving traffic congestion in the mornings and evenings, reducing CO2, decreasing an accident rate, and so on through the proliferation of this model".

administration Kumenan-cho, Okayama

Prefecture Improving convenience and efficiency of shared public transportation

Place	The whole area of Kumenan-cho
Period	2020/1/20 ～ (Weekdays only)
Time	8:15～17:00

Vehicle	4 + 1 spare (2 medium cars, 3 normal cars)
Passenger	Anyone can use
Fare	300 yen (a discount per person per ride)

Reasons for adopting SAVS and requests upon the introduction

"In Kumenan-cho, we have started 'Kappie Noriai Go' since FY 2016, which is a door-to-door reservation-based transportation service available for citizens as transportation within the town. As SRT, Inc., a taxi company that has its branch in the town, is in charge of the operation, the service is now widely accepted by citizens as daily transportation in the aging town. On the other hand, as staff in charge of vehicle allocation used to receive reservation calls and make operation plans, the company had no choice but to limit several operations for streamlining their work. Therefore, we evaluated the previous operating system and started to consider introducing the AI-based car-allocation service to make the service more convenient and efficient".

Things they realized by implementing SAVS after conducting verification tests

"Through the long-term operation of Kappie Noriai Go, we have accumulated operation records (places of hop-ons and hop-offs, time, etc.) that are sufficient for the evaluation. As a result of an analysis by SAVS simulation based on the data, we found out that four sedans can be substituted for six vehicles (including big-sized taxis) that used to operate. Moreover, although we used to set operational limits such as (1) Bus schedules (2) Reservation an hour in advance (morning services should be reserved a day in advance) (3) Operational areas that divide the town into five zones (passengers need to change buses when going to other zones) and (4) Reservation by phone calls, we found out that there is no problem in removing those limits. Based on the results, we have started AI-based car-allocation operation by SAVS from 20 January 2020. We have successfully realized the improvement of passengers' convenience and cost reduction by decreasing the number of vehicles".

medical-welfare MWS Hidaka Co., Ltd. Ota Day-trading center

Fusion between an existing service and SAVS

Place	Ota Day Training Center Facility Center (10km × 10km)
Period	2018/11/1～Ongoing
Time	9:00～16:00

Vehicle	38 (including gate cars (wheelchair lifts))
Passenger	Day care facility users and companions
Fare	300 yen (a discount per person per ride)

Reasons for adopting SAVS and requests upon the introduction

We used to provide transportation service (Fukushi Mover), which daycare users can reserve by a day before they come to our center. However, we received requests from the users that they would like to go out for shopping or going to hospitals when they do not come to the center. By using SAVS, we can efficiently allocate such users to vacant seats of vehicles that operate under Fukushi Mover service.

Things they realized by implementing SAVS after conducting verification tests

We improved SAVS system so that it can process two things at the same time: Reservations from some users by the day before and requests by other users who go out when they do not come to the center. There was a possibility that it would be too difficult for users to make a reservation via smartphones. Therefore, we implemented a passenger application to NTT Docomo's Raku-Raku Phones to decrease the number of procedures the users need to go through to make a reservation. Also, before conducting tests, we organized several information seminars to recruit volunteers who would use the new service, to gain people's understanding of the introduction of the service. By introducing SAVS, in addition to Fukushi Mover, we were able to realize the new service that can allow the users to go to a broader range of places on days they do not use the center. Although our staff themselves had to allocate cars when we were using Fukushi Mover, we can now save a considerable amount of time. Furthermore, we were able to collect essential data to further improve our services in the future by asking the users and non-users their purposes of use, thoughts, and opinions on pricing at the end of every month during the test period.