Private buses join the sharing economy

With the appearance of new mobility services, millennials have shifted from car ownership to car use (i.e. car-sharing), ridesharing (i.e. Blablacar), and ride hailing (i.e. Uber). As a consequence, corporations located in Greater Metropolitan Areas (GMAs), where public transportation is limited, are struggling to attract talented young people who prefer to live in the city centre and refuse to commute if no direct mobility solution is available. The EU-funded BUSUP project solves this current problem.

What is BUSUP?

The bus is the most affordable and sustainable public transport and the BUSUP project  promotes its use together with the importance of today’s shared economy. The result is BUSUP, a personalised, shared corporate bus service.

“BUSUP was created to provide a smart, medium-distance travel solution for corporations located in under-served suburbs and exurbs,” says Eva Romagosa, the project’s co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer. “We help these corporations solve their talent attraction and retention problems by offering the opportunity to join a network of private corporate buses, shared with other nearby companies, that they can use to provide employees with a sustainable and cost-effective commuting solution.”

Every participating company has a personalised web booking platform where their employees can register, request a route, and book their monthly passes. Based on the data provided by the employees, the BUSUP algorithm identifies the optimal routes to maximise the offer and minimise the costs. Moreover, BUSUP users can track the bus’s location via an intuitive, easy-to-use application. Similar to a ride-sharing service like Uber and Lyft, BUSUP does not own the buses, but instead partners with high-quality local bus operators that provide the services for their clients.

Una de las características más innovadoras de la plataforma de BUSUP es que las empresas pueden compartir los costes de los trayectos, no solo con otras empresas cercanas, sino también con sus empleados. Romagosa comenta: «Algunos de nuestros clientes opinan que es importante que los empleados se responsabilicen de una parte de los costes para que valoren el servicio y se den de baja cuando no lo estén usando».

One of the most innovative features of BUSUP  is that corporations can share the costs of the routes not only with nearby companies, but also with their employees. “Some of our clients believe employees should be responsible for part of the costs so they value the service and unsubscribe when they are not actually using it,” explains Romagosa.

Según Romagosa, «La solución de BUSUP permite que nuestros clientes mejoren sus estrategias de atracción y retención de talento, rebajen el coste de los desplazamientos a la mitad y reduzcan de manera significativa su huella de carbono».

Present

BUSUP commuting services are currently available in Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, and Sao Paulo. BUSUP also provides similar services to events like music festivals (i.e. Lollapalooza, RockinRio, etc.) and for private schools.

Currently, the project, which finalised in December 2018, is serving more than 100 corporate clients and is expected to close the year with EUR 2 million in revenue. This sky rocketing start has encouraged its founders to look further ahead: “We want BUSUP to be Europe’s leading corporate mobility solution,” says Romagosa.