By Floridea di Ciommo, CambiaMo and Berlin pilot site leader,

The Berlin pitot focused on an online service that aids on-demand ride-sharing integrated into multimodal route planning for use around the city. Ride-sharing services are particularly important for those who have limited access to mobility alternatives, including private cars, i.e. women caregivers of children.

The volunteers and members participating in pilot 5 selected the UDM recommendation for working on the development of an emergency button concept focusing on perceived safety. To develop such a concept, the pilot derived three scenarios conceptualized through three stages of severity of perceived safety: yellow (relatively safe), orange (moderately safe), red (extremely unsafe).

The recruitment was limited to single mothers in Berlin, Germany, through the Door2Door network responding to profiles. It was one of the main challenges because the application is a white-label platform offering an integrated ride-pooling service to public transport operators and mobility providers.

After the implementation, pilot 5 conducted the remote testing space during two weeks. The CambiaMO team guided tester participants of the Community of Practice in accessing the Maze platform. After the 3 scenarios testing, participants were asked to fill in the evaluation questionnaire including selected questions from the baseline questionnaire.

Comparing the results from phases 1 and 3, the implementation of the safety button and other recommendations from the INDIMO toolbox allows pilot 5 to be the INDIMO pilot that improves the user’s satisfaction of the service the most (8%). Concretely, P5-Berlin responses increase the perception of accessibility around a 5%. Moreover, the perception of the safety of on-demand ridesharing services increased a 9%.

Based on these results, the safety-button is a successful and valuable contribution of the INDIMO UDM.