On-demand coach service offers route to more efficient transport

Chiltern Railways’ former commercial director Thomas Ableman believes that new technology-led transport services will give passengers the service they need

More people are making journeys than ever before. Our streets are getting more crowded and our roads more congested and yet most public transport seats travel empty.

What if public transport could be efficient? Taking people where they want to go, when they want to go, and only taking up road space if the vehicle is actually full. Technology is now at the point where this is possible.

Last year, I stepped out of my comfortable job in rail as commercial director of Chiltern Railways and founded Sn-ap. This is an on-demand, digital business that runs coaches in response to customer demand, which means that they go where people want, and at times they want to go.

At the moment, we’re small and only serving the East Midlands to London corridor. But the impact of technologies such as ours (and there will be others) to transform the way cities work for the better is already clear.

In my previous role, I was part of the team that created the new line from Oxford Parkway to London Marylebone. It was the first new rail link from any major British city to London in over 100 years, which was awe-inspiring, and enough to persuade the Prime Minister (remember David Cameron?) to show up for the opening ceremony. 

But despite the excitement of the opening day, I knew we were just doing things the way they’d always been done: every 30 minutes trains would leave Oxford Parkway (full or not) and run to Marylebone (and no-where else). And whilst Oxford Parkway was ideally placed to relieve congestion in the approach to Oxford Station – a huge traffic pinch-point – it was ultimately destined to become a traffic pinch-point itself.

Since the days of the stagecoach, public transport has operated on the basis of station-to-station connectivity. “Passengers, go and wait in that building and we’ll run the vehicles through it”. From Coaching Inn via Victoria coach station to the gleaming arches of St Pancras, the operational model is much the same.

With Sn-ap we ask people where they actually want to go to and from and then we aggregate the demand and match with high quality local coach companies picking up and setting down at convenient places along the way. We only run coaches when there’s lots of demand, so we run lots of full seats and very few empty ones.

The result: efficient transport, especially for cities. Instead of crowding city centre tube stations with people travelling to city centre train stations (and instead of running dozens of coaches on crowded central London streets), we can keep both people and coaches out in the suburbs where there is space.

Sn-ap is new, and it will take time to develop and grow. It won’t suit everyone; lots of people will continue to prefer the scale of a conventional train or coach station. But as we grow, we will become part of a wave of technological innovation that helps our cities become more efficient and liveable. And I’m very glad to be playing a small part in that change.