ViaVan
ViaVan is a European on-demand shared transit services company founded in 2017 as a joint venture between Mercedes-Benz Vans and US vehicle-sharing service Via. Via and ViaVan also licenses their technology to cities, transit agencies and private organizations to help build their own on-demand shared transit networks.
Daimler, Mercedes-Benz' parent company, becomes a strategic investor in Via. ViaVan lets independent drivers carry passengers and retains 15% of the fare. For comparison, Uber keeps 25%. At the same time, it operates with its own vans.
ViaVan operates in partnership with transport operators in a majority of its deployments throughout Europe. Arriva uses ViaVan's technology to operate its on-demand transportation services in Leicester, Liverpool and Sittingbourne, as does the Oxford Bus Company in Oxford.
History
In September 2017, Via formed a joint venture with Mercedes-Benz Vans to establish ViaVan, designed to spread on-demand shuttle services in Europe. ViaVan launched its first operations in March 2018 in Amsterdam.Arriva UK Bus launched ArrivaClick, an on-demand app developed through a partnership with Via, in Kent in March 2017. Via launched Savy, an app using Via's on-demand ride-sharing technology and a fleet of vehicles owned by the company, in Queenstown, New Zealand in November 2017.
In December 2017, ViaVan announced a new partnership with the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe and Mercedes-Benz Vans to establish the largest public sector on-demand transit deployment in the world. Named BerlKönig, the Berlin fleet would contain 300 vehicles and would be launched in spring 2018. In June 2019, the service won the award for best Public and Urban Transport Strategy from the International Association of Public Transport, as well as the prestigious German Federal Inclusion Award in November 2019. BerlKönig has been deemed a success, delivering more than 750,000 rides in its first 10 months, with more than 80 percent of BerlKönig rides carrying two or more passengers in the vehicle at the same time, reaching up to 97% at peak times.
In April 2018, ViaVan launched in London and operated initially in central London Zones 1 and 2.
In August 2018, Arriva and ViaVan launched ArrivaClick in Liverpool, England.
ViaVan launched in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire in October 2018, making it the company's fourth deployment in Europe.
In February 2019, ViaVan announced a new partnership with Transport for London for a 1-year demand responsive bus pilot in the borough of Sutton. The service operates in collaboration with Go-Ahead London and uses dynamically routed, on-demand buses.
In April 2019, ViaVan and Arriva launched the third deployment of ArrivaClick in the Drummond Estate development in Leicester, England, one of the largest new housing developments in the East Midlands. The partnership also represents the first time in the UK that a Section 106 agreement has been used to fund a digitised Demand Responsive Transport service.
In May 2019, ViaVan partnered with Transport for London to launch an on-demand public transportation pilot in Sutton. The demand-responsive bus service operated by Go-Ahead aims to link more people to existing TfL transit and reduce the need for private car ownership.
ViaVan reported it had successfully completed the pilot phase of an on-demand, dynamic corporate shuttle at the Mercedes-Benz Bremen plant in Bremen, Germany on June 28, 2019. Due to the success of the pilot program, ViaVan and Mercedes-Benz announced they would be launching additional corporate campus solutions at other Mercedes-Benz plants.
In July, 2019, ViaVan launched Malta's first-ever ridesharing service called Cool. The service covered 28 Maltese neighborhoods at launch, with plans to expand to the entire island nation.
ViaVan also received a three-year license renewal from Transport for London in July, 2019. The company announced it provided more than 7 million rides in London since launching, saving 3 million vehicle kilometers by pooling multiple passengers into shared vehicles, resulting in more than 600,000 kilograms of CO2 saved.
ViaVan announced a new public transportation deployment on behalf of Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe in August 2019 called “BerlKönig BC” serving as first-and-last-mile connection to U-Bahn railway stations traditionally underserved by fixed route services. BerlKönig BC is the second service ViaVan and BVG have worked on together, following on the heels of their first BerlKönig service, which launched in central Berlin in September 2018.
In September 2019, ViaVan announced its first dynamically routed transit solution in Finland in partnership with the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority. The service operates in Espoo, allowing riders to book an on-demand trip and connect to Metro and train stations in the operating zone.
In October 2019, ViaVan launched the UK's first fully electric fleet serving on-demand shared rides in Milton Keynes. The service began by adding five electric Mercedes-Benz Vito eTourers to its fleet with plans to expand the fleet of on-demand shuttles to thirty electric vehicles by 2020. The funding through Milton Keynes Council supports the Department for Transport's initiatives around Ultra Low Emission Vehicles, which aims to help cities meet targets for reducing carbon emissions and provide an efficient and sustainable on-demand service for passengers.
Later that month, ViaVan began operating the third public sector deployment of its technology for on-demand shared rides in Germany in the City of Bielefeld. Called Anton, the on-demand public transportation service is a direct partnership with local public transit operator moBiel, the company behind Germany's Bielefeld Stadtbahn.
In November 2019, ViaVan partnered with the Netherland-based oil and gas company Shell to launch a fast-charging shared electric mobility project in Amsterdam. The program integrates ViaVan's on-demand technology and operations, “Shell Recharge” technology, and charging station infrastructure into one seamless system. ViaVan and Shell aim to demonstrate that high-capacity electric fleets can improve performance when routing to available chargers is intelligently optimized.