DEMANDTRANS, Inc of Chicago, IL and Strafica, Ltd. of Helsinki, Finland announce key strategic partnership to provide dynamic mobility solutions to U.S. cities of all sizes. Group to focus on technologies to support Mobility as a Service (MaaS) transportation modeling, planning, and forecasting for transit agencies and the development of Smart Cities.
CHICAGO, IL HELSINKI, FINLAND (PRWEB) APRIL 28, 2017
It is a fact that any change in a customer’s mobility behavior is directly correlated to the quality and reliability of transportation services. Historically, transit planning and demand modeling has been driven by infrastructure–and the actual factors affecting user choices have been neglected. This is a result of there not being a reliable way to simulate these factors or to calculate their impact. At the same time, there has been no means to illustrate and create accessible presentations so transportation professionals can more effectively and efficiently deliver an optimal blend of mobility options.
Until now.
DEMANDTRANS is excited to announce its latest key strategic partnership with Strafica, Ltd, a leading Finnish transport engineering and consultancy founded in 2000. The company’s suite of services are extensive, robust and include solutions and services in the following areas: Urban Planning, Traffic Analysis and Forecasts, Intelligent Transport System Design, Sustainable Traffic Assessment, Transit Management Center Analysis, Parking, Traffic Safety and Public Transport Planning.
In recent years Strafica has invested significantly in advanced transit research and data analytics capabilities. Together, DEMANDTRANS and Strafica will launch an array of robust planning, modeling and assessment tools via the forthcoming DEMANDTRANS Transit Labs suite of products. Focusing on providing sophisticated computational and simulation tools to assess varied transport patterns, optimize mode selection, and develop interactive demand pattern maps as well as the statistical analyses to promote the design and deployment of more effective and efficient transportation services, Strafica and DEMANDTRANS intend to transform how mobility planning is accomplished to promote safer, smarter, greener, and healthier transport alternatives.
Strafica’s Brutus, the heart of the Transit Labs solution, is an extraordinary transport modeling methodology. Instead of working with mean values within city districts, Brutus deals with individuals. Every trip an individual takes is modeled or simulated separately. Moreover, mobility behavior is handled realistically as unique trip chains instead of problematic simplifications. This means the Brutus technology accounts for the fact a person may visit a grocery store or a school on their way home instead of returning via the shortest path–as is currently assumed in existing demand modeling and forecasting. The geographical accuracy of Brutus is practically unlimited, which is important when modeling the patterns of cyclists and pedestrians. As a result of these analytics, Brutus can be used to create a very accurate prediction of the transport flows of any transport mode in a city.
The key features of the Brutus-powered, Strafica/DEMANDTRANS Transit Lab demand analytics system include:
- Ability to accurately simulate the travel decisions of each household and individual
- Capability to simulate trip chains as they appear in regional mobility data
- Modeling destination choices based on accessibility
- Modeling efficiency of mode and route choices in conjunction with destination choices
- Seamless integration with route-planners and real-time Flex/OnDemand dispatchers with realistic presentation of transport supply
The output of the model includes the following:
- Detailed traffic flows by trip category for each travel mode per day or any other chosen time window (e.g. work, school, shopping)
- Detailed illustration of cyclist/pedestrian flows to train stations and bus stops as part of multi-modal trips.
- Accurate regional summary data: trip amounts, lengths, time consumption, traffic output, pollution, etc., all of which can be used to improve land-use or transport infrastructure development and/or enhancement.
For over two decades, DEMANDTRANS, Inc. has been instrumental in delivering advanced technology and software applications to solve challenging problems in the transit industry. From operations management, resource scheduling, predictive modeling, transportation logistics or smart city solutions, the DemandTrans team works with clients and partners in the U.S. and abroad to design and deliver intelligent transit technology to help make Mobility-As-A-Service (MAAS) an actionable reality in any city of any size. To learn more about how the DEMANDTRANS Brutus enabled Transit Lab Solutions can promote greater flexibility in transit systems and cities. please email us directly.
For additional information on DemandTrans or Strafica, visit our websites at http://www.DemandTrans.com and http://www.strafica.fi