Dundee recruits mobility firms to develop new services in city

MOBILITY

Dundee: contracts a precursor to MaaS?

Dundee: contracts a precursor to MaaS?

Dundee City Council has appointed firms to deliver a range of mobility services in the city, which could provide the foundation for a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) product. 

Neil Gellatly, Dundee’s head of roads and transportation, told LTT the initiatives were all part of the city’s Mobility Innovation Living Laboratory (MILL) project, which aims to deliver new services for citizens while enabling mobility firms to develop and test their products in a live setting.

The council invited tenders against five Lots for different mobility services. 

Car club operator Co-wheels has been appointed under Lot 1, which covered advanced mobility services for the public. The operator will develop its existing car club in the city, including by making use of Dundee City Council’s mini-bus fleet; using solar power to charge electric cars; opening up fleet and pool cars for wider public use; and exploring the potential for integration with bike hire services. 

Co-Wheels came top of the price/quality ranking for Lot 1, with a bid of £128,820. Unsuccessful bidders were: Conigital, E-Car Club, Enterprise, IBI Group, Indigo Park Services, NCP and Ubitricity.

Contracts for Lot 2 (advanced fleet services) have been awarded to E-Car Club and Enterprise, with bids of £51,800 and £150,250 respectively. 

E-Car Club will work with Blackwood Homes, a care home business in the city, introducing fully electric vehicles and associated charging infrastructure at centrally located Blackwood sites for shared use by Blackwood staff and the wider community.

Enterprise will make available a fleet of low emission car club vehicles for shared use by public and private sector organisations in the city. The company is the sole supplier of car hire to the Scottish Government, Police Scotland, and NHS Scotland and also serves over 60 corporate accounts in the city.  

Unsuccessful Lot 2 bidders were Co-Wheels, Mobiag, NCP, Urban Integrated, and Virtual Forge. 

Lot 3 covered advanced parking services. Two contracts have been awarded, to Atkins /Appy Parking (£283,879) and Just Park (£132,600). 

The Atkins/AppyParking bid will see parking bay sensors installed in all 530 city centre on-street bays and app-based pay-by-the-minute parking. Users will receive a notification on their mobile phone to start payment for a parking session when they park in a bay; pay only for the minutes parked; and have parking sessions end automatically when leaving the bay. 

Just Park’s services will include a pre-booking system for electric vehicle charging points; dynamic and emissions-based charging; and a “predictive availability service”. 

Unsuccessful Lot 3 bidders were Smart Parking Ltd, NCP, Chipside, Flexisolar, Swarco, and Indigo Park Services.

Two bike hire schemes will be launched under Lot 5, both at zero cost to the council. Urbo will provide a dockless scheme and Ride On will provide a docked electric bike hire scheme.

No contracts were awarded under Lot 4, which covered urban data and data-led mobility services. Dundee says no bidder submitted a proposal that represented value for money or fully addressed the objectives.

Mike Galloway, Dundee’s executive director of city development, told councillors a new tender would be run to develop a “consolidated journey management system”, covering the above services and others such as public transport.  

“With this solution in place, the MILL ShareMORE programme will aim to deliver a first-of-a-kind mobility demonstrator offering Dundee residents, businesses and visitors with a single service to access (electric) vehicles from Scotland’s three main car clubs (including underutilised Dundee City Council vehicles) and smart parking anywhere in the city centre off- or on-street,” said an officer report. 

A key objective is to develop a MaaS product “that builds in competition from service providers from day one, creating a marketplace for mobility services rather than a single, locked-in consortium”. 

Car clubs and parking services could create a “critical mass” that could then bring in other services, such as bus services and bike hire. The city already has the ABC multi-operator bus ticket.

The £747,349 programme costs are being met with £298,940 from the city’s European Regional Development Fund; £82,208 from the Scottish Cities Alliance investment fund, and the remainder from the council. The MILL project is managed by Urban Foresight.