Innovation Pilot Partner: Co-Wheels

Co-Wheels is working to optimise the use of Dundee City Council’s community minibuses. The minibuses currently have a relatively low rate of utilisation and are expensive to operate.

A new booking platform and in-vehicle telematics will allow a greater number of community groups across the city to easily access the minibuses, delivering a new shared mobility service and reducing the cost to the public sector of operating these vehicles.

The project is also exploring opportunities to make the vehicles available to the general public in periods when they would not otherwise be used. This requires careful consideration of insurance and licensing requirements in addition to ensuring there is no detriment to existing users. If successful, this will provide additional revenue to the Council and create a new shared asset for the city.

Improved usage statistics and a better understanding of scheduling could support a reduction of the number of minibuses in its fleet and still meet the demand from community groups. This would lead to a more optimised usage as well as operational savings and avoidance of the necessary capital investment to replace ageing minibuses.

Reduced operational costs could also be passed on to community groups in the form of lower hire costs allowing these savings to be invested elsewhere.