A perfectly good alternative to the private car

You take public transport to and from work, sometimes walk or cycle, but otherwise use the car a lot. Sound familiar? For many residents of the Oslo region, this is their daily travel routine. The car is popular for several reasons: It takes you from door to door exactly when it suits you, you have space for the dog, shopping bags, your mother-in-law, the neighbor, and the kids. A journey on your own terms, in other words.

But, if our transport system is to function well in the years to come, we need to use the car less. Population growth and an ever-increasing car fleet mean gradually worse traffic flow on the roads. In cities, where space is scarce, large and valuable areas are occupied by private cars that are unused and parked over 90% of the time. And on top of all this are the CO2 emissions from both the production and use of the car.

In short, we need to travel together when we can, and alone only when we must.

So what we at Ruter ask ourselves every day is: How can we make the public transport service so attractive and flexible that many more people can manage completely without a car? And at least not need a second car?

To achieve this, we need to do several things simultaneously:

But if we are serious about reducing private car use in our region, we believe that public transport will need to offer an even more direct alternative to the car. Something that is as close as possible to the feeling of having your own car and that gives you the same sense of freedom and flexibility, but that is more sustainable than all of us continuing to own and drive our own vehicles.

Ruter believes that a good alternative to the private car can be on-demand transport that comes and picks you up where you are and takes you where you need to go. If the vehicle can also pick up other passengers along the way, we can contribute to reducing the number of vehicles on the roads in our region.

Ruter has already tested several types of ride-sharing-based on-demand transport, such as Age-Friendly Transport in the City of Oslo. The on-demand service for everyone over 67 was originally launched as a pilot project, but it has since become a permanent and popular part of the public transport service in the city. In 2023, we expanded the service to Østensjø, and throughout the year we have been working on a larger expansion to even more districts in 2024.

However, on-demand transport cannot remain a limited service available only to certain groups. If we are to seriously compete with the private car, such services must be available to everyone. Therefore, throughout 2023 we have been working on the development of a new, publicly accessible on-demand service, which we aim to test a first version of in 2024.

The service will initially consist of a fleet of vehicles serving a limited geographical area. If you are within the designated area, you can book a trip with the app, and one of the vehicles will come and pick you up nearby. If other people in the area have booked a trip in the same direction, they will be picked up along the way. The service is based on lessons learned from previous pilot projects, and we are working to be able to offer this type of transport throughout the Oslo region in the longer term.

Today, the car is indispensable for many people in their daily lives. At Ruter, we believe that flexible and reliable on-demand transport can eventually change this. First, we may succeed in reducing the common tendency for family households to need two cars. In the longer term, we believe it may become more common to not own a car than to do so.

Our long-term ambition is to create such a complete offering of public transport services that means no one needs to own their own vehicle to experience the feeling of freedom of movement.