MV Transportation has released a solution to help communities and transit agencies expand options for mobility challenged riders.
MV says more than a third of US residents have special transportation needs with many elderly and disabled individuals relying heavily on Americans with Disabilities paratransit, which often involves advanced scheduling, shared rides and longer commute times.
At the same time, the company claims there is a lack of standardised pedestrian information available as an avenue to providing these individuals access to more transportation options.
The new MV Pathways solution is expected to provide trip guidance that enables individuals to be trained to safely use more accessible and less costly fixed-route buses.
According to MV, shifting a portion of the 200 million paratransit trips provided each year estimated by the American Public Transit Association 2020 Fact Book to lower cost fixed-route trips will provide operating cost reductions to transit agencies.
The solution has a technology platform, secure integration to public transit passenger and scheduling software and structured rider travel training educational material.
In 2021, MV Pathways was implemented in collaboration with King County Metro in Seattle, Washington.
MV emphasises that metro's legacy programme faced technology and data limitations that made it difficult to share insights with partners, technology developers and other departments and working groups.
The transport authority improved its productivity via MV Pathways and expects to transition up to 10,000 rider trips annually from paratransit to fixed route or an alternative mode of public transit.
Christina O’Claire, King County Metro mobility division director, says: “For too long, cities, counties and transit systems have lacked coordination in our efforts to bring equity to our public infrastructure. Our programme, utilising MV’s Pathways solution, provides game changing innovation that allows us to partner with each other and the community to collect and analyse this data together.”
The latest version of MV Pathways includes an updated Pathway Review tablet application. It also offers enhanced integration with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) digital elevation models and General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), which together will provide accelerated deployment for additional cities across North America.
