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Case Study: PTI Cymru & ModusEncouraging commuters to use public transport “The individual needs of our employees here at British Gas are of paramount importance and we always strive to go that extra mile to make their work experience with us as enjoyable and seamless as possible. This is why we joined forces with PTI Cymru, to offer personalised travel plans to all of our new starters. ” - A Modus Customer, British Gas. SnapshotType of Operation: Multimodal Business ProblemPTI Cymru, through Traveline Cymru, provides timetable and journey planning information about all public transport services - buses, coaches, trains, ferries and planes - in Wales. Trapeze Group has worked with Traveline Cymru since 1999 providing solutions for the organisation’s journey planning and enquiry management systems. Recently PTI Cymru wanted ways to encourage the use of public transport for commutes to and from work. Giving commuters prepared personalised travel plans prepared was a good way to start. PTI Cymru needed a simple to use system that would take input in a spreadsheet format, and produce in a variety of formats. It also needed to capture instances where public transport may be underprovided. SolutionPTI Cymru set up the Modus project in May 2004 to provide free personalised journey plans to individuals in organisations in Wales. Modus utilises the Trapeze Batch Journey Planner, a module attached to the Trapeze Enquiry Management System already in use in Wales’ Traveline Call Centres. The Batch Journey Planner runs many journey plans in rapid succession. It is typically used as a personalised journey planner to plan the trips of many people from different origin points to one destination. For example a large company could run employees’ addresses and working hours through the Batch Journey Planner to see how they could commute to work and back using public transport. Trapeze set up the system and worked with PTI Cymru to design appropriate templates for output from the system. Several templates are now available each with its own layout and wording, suitable for more or less formal communication. Personalised journey plans automatically produced by the system can be printed and mailed, or sent electronically. The system can also compare the results with the bus/rail timetable database. This helps to highlight any gaps in Providing this information to local authorities or public transport operators can help to improve service provision. Modus is used by a wide number of organisations ranging from local authorities (e.g. Vale of Glamorgan council, Wrexham council) to educational institutions (e.g. University of Glamorgan, UWIC, Coleg Gwent and Deeside college) to the private sector (e.g. British Gas call centre, NTL, Oriel Jones) and even sports venues (the Liberty Stadium in Swansea)! ResultsSince its launch, the Batch Journey Planner system has produced more than 45,000 journey plans, garnering a couple of awards on the way. Both awards were received from the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport. The first, received in 2005, was for Services to Rural Transport. The Batch Journey Planner was used to identify that a certain service was not allowing a large number of staff at a call centre the chance to travel home using public transport. The Batch Journey Planner identified the correct time the service was required and the service was altered by five minutes. The second award, received in 2006, was for Partnership Working with the South West Wales Integrated Transport Consortium (SWWITCH). This award was received for the successful work undertaken in that region through a partnership between the Regional Travel Plan Co-ordinator and Jo Horton, Modus Project Co-ordinator. Of the 45,000 travel plans produced for individuals in Wales, nearly half have been produced for the South West Wales region. What's NextTo further improve available public transport information, Traveline Scotland is now considering the benefits of Trapeze’s Batch Journey Planner.
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