Shared Transport System combines GPS and Mobile Technology to Unlock Millions of Wasted Seats
DUBLIN, Ireland (Friday, 19 September 2008) – In conjunction with Cork City’s European Mobility Week event, Mapflow announced the upcoming availability for the Avego Shared Transport System in Europe this Friday afternoon.
Mapflow’s Avego is being introduced as a new iPhone application designed to reduce wasted seat capacity in cars and dramatically expand commuting options. Making its American introduction last week at the semi-annual DEMO conference in California, Mapflow Ltd sparked a global media buzz, and was named by some, including Silicon Valley’s San Jose Mercury News, as the most innovative technology amongst the 72 companies invited to participate at the show. Mapflow Ltd was the only Irish company invited to launch their product at DEMO, which featured companies from all over the world.
A cross between carpooling, public transport and eBay, Avego matches a driver’s wasted seat capacity—those seats which are unoccupied—to passengers, reducing commute costs for all participants. Avego automatically apportions the cost of the commute, providing a key financial incentive to commuters frustrated by high gasoline prices. The free iPhone application also can improve the efficiency of urban mobility for transportation authorities and corporate campuses, while providing transit agencies with a means to connect potential customers with real-time passenger information via mobile devices.
This service, which uses common cell phone and computer technologies to arrange ad-hoc carpools, is perfect for a time of high gas prices, environmental concerns and poor public transit options,” wrote San Jose Mercury News reporter Troy Wolverton in Monday’s paper, referring to the Avego consumer technology. “Not only does the system promise to make carpooling easier, it also gives drivers a financial incentive to pick up passengers because riders pay drivers a per-mile fee to defray gas costs.”
In Ireland, bus operator JJ Kavanagh & Sons, has been working with commercial versions of the Avego technology.
“As the largest private bus operator in Ireland, JJ Kavanagh & Sons recognizes the need to continue our growth through innovation and automation. In this era of instant information, we want to provide our customers with personalised real-time departure and arrival information, as well as digital ticketing. We’ve been working with Avego to roll out these capabilities both on-line and throughout our fleet in Ireland,” said Adam Buckeridge, IT and Business Development manager at JJ Kavanagh
& Sons.
Chris Shipley, the executive producer of the DEMO Conferences, was also keen on Avego saying, “The Avego paradigm optimizes the daily commute by consolidating riders into fewer vehicles. It’s a new way of thinking about commuting, offering more efficient transit options, lowered gas costs and environmental benefits.”
The Avego system has been under development in Ireland for the last two years. Led by SOSventures’ $5.8 million investment in Mapflow last year, the first fruits of the Kinsale and Dublin based development team will be hitting the market next month at the American Public Transit Association’s trade show in San Diego.
“Avego could capture a whole new generation of drivers who excel at social networking and mobile technologies,” said Ian Winning, Senior Executive Engineer at Cork City’s Traffic Division. “This easy to use service would achieve very significant energy saving on each shared trip. Avego is one of those leading edge applications which ‘makes being greener so much more cool’”.
Arriving in the midst of a global green movement, Avego intends to capitalize on social networking to encourage more responsible and environmentally friendly behavior. Developed by Mapflow’s team of experts in geographic information systems, Avego combines GPS technology and mobile phones to provide both riders and drivers with reduced transport costs.
Features in the upcoming Avego system include:
Enables drivers to automatically advertise excess capacity that can be filled by paying passengers.
Provides voice response, text messaging and Web interfaces with real-time information for drivers and riders to investigate and define the available transport capacity.
Allows communities of users (e.g., a corporate or educational campus) to self-restrict matches to their own community.
Offers a self-correcting feedback mechanism for drivers and riders to rate each other, and subsequently restrict matches to those within the user’s criteria. For example, a female driver may choose to only accept female passengers.
Monitors positions of riders and drivers to ensure reliability of service and provide safety warnings.
“Public transport is great, but let’s face it, other than in Dublin, most of the public doesn’t have sufficient access in place to take people from where they live to where they work. Our goal with Avego is to turn every empty seat into a transport option for passengers…extending, feeding and augmenting the existing transportation network,” said Sean O’Sullivan, executive chairman of Mapflow.
Drivers and passengers who want to join the Avego shared transport community can sign up for the beta at http://www.avego.com. (Drivers only require an iPhone; passengers can use either an iPhone or a regular mobile phone).
About Mapflow’s Avego
Avego is a method for dynamically matching available transport capacity with transport demand. Avego combines GPS devices and mobile phones to provide both riders and drivers with reduced transport costs, while expanding transport options for riders. Led by a team with an extensive history in geographic information systems and GPS technologies, Mapflow has offices in Dublin (Ireland), Kinsale (Ireland), London (UK), the San Francisco Bay Area, and will be opening up an office in Washington, DC later this year. For more information, please visit www.avego.com
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Sean O’Sullivan Whitney Phaneuf
Mapflow Schwartz Communications
Kinsale, Ireland: +353.21.477.3833 415.512.0770
US: 202.470.0467 Mapflow@schwartz-pr.com