Supporting rural communities through flexible integrated transport services

In rural areas, transport service availability is limited and as a result rural passengers face a range of challenges accessing basic amenities such as healthcare. Meeting the transport needs of rural communities with conventional public transport would require services with frequent schedules and widespread coverage; such an approach is financially unjustifiable for the passenger numbers
attainable. Consequently, flexible transport services have been employed. However, many such services in rural areas are standalone, rigid, inefficient, costly and only offer passengers limited travel options. We propose a model of flexible integrated transport services, which can provide a desirable level of
flexibility for passengers to express preferences for factors such as modes of transport, routes, and time of travel while allowing different services to be integrated in order to improve performance and efficiency. This paper presents a novel flexible integrated transport system that addresses some of these issues with the aim to aid passengers in more easily accessing basic amenities.