Moventia reaches 25 million passengers in Mecca

Moventia carried 25.6 million passengers in Mecca (Saudi Arabia) in 2022. This was achieved via its urban bus service, which provided mobility services to the inhabitants of Mecca and the millions of pilgrims who travel to the city every year.

On this first incursion into the Saudi market, the service has been rolled out through the Moventis subsidiary, TCC, alongside a consortium of Spanish and Saudi companies.

The operation, which required an investment of 250 million euros from the consortium, was partially launched in February 2022 and has been fully up and running since October of the same year. With 12 lines and 438 stops, the service has experienced constant passenger growth and eventually carried 200,000 passengers/day in December.

After completing the roll-out stage (bus manufacture, the implementation of on-board technology, employee recruitment and depot construction; including garages, control centres, offices and employee housing), we are now busy with the operation and maintenance stage, which will continue until 2030.

The company owned by Moventia in Saudi Arabia and that has 400 vehicles in the region, known as Makkah Buses (240 standard 12-metre buses and 160 articulated 18-metre buses), has given jobs to more than 1,200 people from several different countries, 25% of them Saudis. This falls in line with the Saudi nationalisation plan, which has been enshrined in the Vision 2030 strategic plan, a roadmap that seeks to harness the strengths of Saudi Arabia to improve international trade and its investment power.

Another of the milestones reached under the operation in Mecca is the inclusion of women in the team. We have successfully integrated the female sector into the offices, the control centre, the training department and customer support service. This is another major factor that forms part of the goals set by the country.

Jordi Castells, Managing Director of Moventis, said that “our goal was to create an urban transport service in Saudi Arabia that meets the high quality standards set by Moventis. There is no doubt that the growing number of passengers that we carry every day and the excellent passenger satisfaction levels confirm we have achieved that goal. Following the success of this first project in Saudi Arabia, Moventis is ready and excited to embark on new contracts in the country as a partner that can help achieve its 2030 Vision”. 

 

In turn, the CEO of the Royal Commission for Makkah and Holy Sites, Saleh bin Ibrahim Al-Rasheed, stressed to the Saudi media that the increase in bus use surpassed expectations for 2022. He went on to add that the authorities will get involved in the next stage, aimed at adapting the technology, in order to provide a unique experience capable of meeting the needs of residents and visitors to the city and its temples. 

 

Moventis Sarfa, awarded as Regular Transport Company of the Year

Moventis Sarfa has received the Company of the Year award, in the Regular Transport category, from the prestigious Autobuses y Autocares magazine.

The reference publication in passenger transport presented the award at the XXXI edition of the Las Empresas del Año awards, held on December 20 at the IFEMA pavilions in Madrid. Juan Giménez, CEO of Moventis Regular, was in charge of collecting the recognition on behalf of the company belonging to the Moventia group.

During the award ceremony, Autobuses y Autocares also presented a special issue of the magazine dedicated to the winning companies. The publication highlighted the merits and initiatives implemented by the awarded operators.

The Las Empresas del Año awards have been given since 1992 and represent an ovation for the work carried out by different companies at the state level dedicated to passenger transport in different categories: road, discretionary and urban.

The general director of Moventis Regular, Juan Giménez, has positively assessed the award: “This award recognizes the work that all the professionals who work at Moventis Sarfa carry out every day, and its objective is none other than to offer all our users in Girona a service with the highest standards of quality and safety. We want to thank Autobuses y Autocares magazine for granting us this award. It is a privilege to receive a distinction from a benchmark in the information of our sector.”

Moventis Sarfa wanted to thank Autobuses y Autocares for the important recognition and the entities and users who, day by day, accompany the company and encourage it to continue guaranteeing the best mobility experience for people.

Moventia participates in the Congress of Municipal Engineers 2022

Júlia Gilavert, Manager of Moventis SARBUS, participated this Tuesday, November 29, in the 2022 Congress of Municipal Engineers, which was held virtually.

The event, promoted by the Col·legi d’Enginyers Civils and aimed at engineering professionals who carry out their activity locally, received the expert from the Moventia group in a session called “New mobility”.

During his speech, Gilavert presented the success story of the on-demand public transport service operated by Moventis in the municipality of Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona).

The company representative explained how the three-line service works, in which users request the trip they want to make, through the telephone platform or the digital application (Shotl). At this point, the Moventis SARBUS Manager argued that, as a result of Covid-19, the company carried out a user awareness campaign to teach them how to use the application, and that, since then, the number of telephone reservations has potentially decreased, reducing the technological gap of the population.

Júlia Gilavert determined that this service has been a “success story” for Moventis, since after the pandemic the on-demand lines were the “first to recover in the return to normality”. The expert attributed this result to the fact that users saw it as an “opportunity to travel by public transport in a much less massive way.”

Given the conclusions of the service, the representative of Moventis argued that the on-demand service is a “very necessary consolidated service” that, “if it is well operated and organized, it works”.

Participation in the 2022 Congress of Municipal Engineers was a good projection opportunity for the company. Moventia, like the other speakers, had a virtual stand where users could access the most relevant information on the company.

Moventia in Pays de Grasse

Moventia has been awarded the contract to manage the urban transport service in the agglomeration community (a French government structure) of Pays de Grasse, in the region of Provence.
For a scheduled duration of 10 years, transport services will be provided under this concession to a conurbation inhabited by a little over 100,000 people. The concession will begin on 1 January 2023, when Moventia – a member of the Railway and Public Transport Syndicate of France – will manage all urban and intercity transport lines in the Pays de Grasse area through its subsidiary, Moventis. The company will also make school bus services available to all as a way to improve its service throughout the region. 
A fleet of 70 buses and microbuses will be used to meet demand, most of which were made in France by the Iveco brand. A number of electric vehicles are expected to join this fleet over the course of the concession to cover part of the service. Screens will also be installed to digitalise the information offered at bus stops and terminals, and solar panels will be installed to power those screens. 

The new network will also include a shuttle service from the city centre and a new line within the Bus with a High Level of Service (Buzo à Haut Niveau de Service) to boost capacity and regularity on this service. 
Finally, the concession also includes the construction of a new logistics platform for Grasse by 2025, with a capacity for some 100 buses. The new depot, which will have two levels above ground and two more below ground, will be built according to the environmental quality and sustainability guidelines for Bâtiments Durables Méditerranéens (BDM, or Mediterranean Sustainable Buildings). Moventis has now consolidated itself as a real alternative to the traditional French transport groups. 
The offer from Moventia in France will also include a new bicycle service to be launched in Marseille in December 2022. This service will consist of 2,000 electric, smart and connected bicycles. The bicycles will serve as their own docking station and charging platform. The system will also include a total of 200 fixed docking stations to provide an innovative hybrid solution for the French municipality.

The social commitment from the company seeks to create strong ties with its employees in order to achieve constructive and shared social dialogue, thereby becoming more competitive. As a member of the European Women in Transport platform, Moventia will also fight to guarantee gender equality and safety in the workplace as it continues to establish itself in France. 
Miquel Martí, CEO of Moventia, described the confidence placed in the company by the authorities of Pays de Grasse as “very positive”. “We would like to thank Pays de Grasse for its confidence in us. We will make every effort to provide the best possible service, to innovate and to remain loyal to our passengers and users. This company strives to offer quality transport for all”, he said. 

 

The Pays de Grasse urban and intercity transport concession is the second obtained by Moventia in France. The company has been managing the urban, intercity and school bus service in Pays de Montbéliard Agglomération, an agglomeration community in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region on the border with Switzerland, since 2017.
Through the Smovengo consortium, Moventia was also officially awarded the contract to manage Vélib in France in 2017, the public bicycle loan service in the metropolitan region of Paris. Four years later, in Clermont Ferrand, the company added another bicycle service to its portfolio with Inurba.

Photo: Jérôme Viaud, Aglomeración de Grasse president and Miquel Marti, Moventia’s CEO

Moventia participates in the IESE dialogues

This Monday, November 21, Moventia has participated in the opening day of the Barcelona Mobility Dialogues of IESE Business School, which has been called Public transport: buses.

 

Representatives of the Moventia group’s public passenger transport division, such as Elena Aguarta – Regulatory Affairs-, attended the presentation as experts in the industry.

 

The colloquium was held within the framework of the collaboration of the graduate school in business management of the University of Navarra (IESE) with the Mobility and Infrastructure Management of Barcelona City Council.

 

Public transport: buses has been part of an eight-session program that is carried out during the 2022-2023 academic year and that aims to give a comprehensive and updated vision of mobility in the metropolitan region of Barcelona.

 

During the dialogue, the future of this means of transport was discussed and about the environmentally ethical alternatives that will be applied in the coming years with the aim of promoting a 100% sustainable service, objectives that Moventia shares.

Moventia receives Pays de Montbéliard

On October 24, representatives of the Moventia Council received at the corporate offices of Moventia in Sant Cugat del Vallés a delegation from the government of the Pays de Montbéliard Agglomeration made up of Mr. Charles Demouge, President, and Mrs. Aline Pellet, General Director of Services.

During the visit, the guests were able to get to know first-hand the human team of the Moventia corporate departments that actively participate in the proper day-to-day running of the Moventis Pays de Montbéliard operation, supporting the local human team. Likewise, they were able to see how the control center of the exploitation in the province of Barcelona works and were able to share impressions with the management team that was accompanying them throughout their visit.

Moventia began its business career in France with the urban, interurban and school transport service for the Pays de Montbéliard agglomeration in 2017, in the French county of north-eastern France, bordering Switzerland, where 72 municipalities are served. The Moventis – Pays de Montbéliard service is developed thanks to the daily work of 215 professionals, 65 of its own urban buses and 50 subcontractors.

Moventia, focused on equal opportunities

Moventia works hard to ensure equality for its workforce. The multinational transport services company also constantly strives to remedy any act of discrimination that may take place within its various divisions.

In order to follow that path towards workplace equality and zero tolerance against discrimination, Moventia has adopted a pro-active system to meet the needs for improvement in this area. Occupational welfare is a top priority for the company. Moventia considers it essential to maintain a satisfied and motivated team as a way to enhance the skills and aptitudes of all its employees. It also seeks to create a pleasant working environment in which its people feel safe and comfortable.

Furthermore, the company is committed to offering diversity and inclusion that is capable of eradicating discrimination. This commitment is enshrined in its personnel recruitment and internal promotion procedures. Moventia also undertakes to use inclusive language to support gender equality.

In order to maintain its position as a leader in equality and as an example to be followed by other operators in the public and private transport sector, the company has adapted processes that can be adjusted over time to remedy potential changes in the application of equality between male and female workers.

Given this commitment to and positive action on equality issues, 15 of the companies in the mobility group are currently certified regarding compliance with the requirements to receive the SGI 20.10 seal of quality under the Equal Opportunities Management System. This was confirmed by an official audit conducted by SGI Standards, a company from the SGP Group with expertise in the field of equal opportunities.

Despite obtaining these excellent results, Moventia will continue to work tirelessly on maintaining its social commitment to equality between men and women and against discrimination.

 

Moreover, the group also has an extensive track record in terms of social responsibility. Based on efforts forming part of the business in which the company is engaged, the multinational is committed to the most achievable targets proposed under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The United Nations Organisation has defined actions aimed at globally promoting an improved outlook for all towards a better world based on measures that seek to remedy existing poverty and improve protection for our planet, among other things.

The T-mobilitat is already in operation on the urban buses of Sant Sadurní, Sitges and Vilanova i la Geltrú

The T-mobilitat, the new system for traveling to the public transport network in the Barcelona area, already integrates the urban bus service lines in the Garraf and Alt Penedès regions. This is a new step in the incorporation of buses from the entire Integrated Fare System in the Barcelona area, which will continue in the coming weeks.

This week’s integration incorporates new urban bus lines from outside the metropolitan area operated by TCC, from the Moventis group, specifically in the municipalities of Sant Sadurní, Sitges and Vilanova i la Geltrú.

The expansion of the T-mobilitat outside the Barcelona metropolitan area has been progressive since last summer. Currently, the new system makes it possible to travel throughout the Barcelona ATM railway network, the entire bus network of the Barcelona metropolitan area and increasingly on more intercity and urban bus services of the crowns 2, 3, 4 , 5 and 6. You can check the territorial expansion of the system on the T-mobilitat website.

 

Ticket sales channels

The sale of ATM Barcelona tickets in all areas is carried out through the official marketing channels of the T-mobilitat:

 

Transport tickets purchased with the T-mobilitat system also enjoy the same discount as tickets from the magnetic system. In this sense, the tickets of all the zones of the T-usual (also FM/FN), T-casual and T-joven (also FM/FN) can be purchased with the corresponding rate reduction until December 31, 2022 It should be remembered that all integrated transport tickets will be valid until January 15, 2023. More information on the reduction of fares and their conditions on the Barcelona ATM website.

 

Care channels

The T-mobilitat makes different service channels available to citizens to resolve doubts and incidents:

On the other hand, it is recalled that, from the age of 6, all people traveling on public transport are required to wear a mask.

 

Intelligent mobility at the Polígons d’Activitat Econòmica

 

On last Friday, October 28, Moventia participated as a speaker at Hub b30’s Innovation Brunch. It was in the framework of the conference of the Mobilitat intel·ligent als Polígons de l’Activitat Econòmica (PAE), organized by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Unió de Polígons Industrials de Catalunya (UPIC).

Elena Aguarta, Director of Innovation Services for Mobility and Regulatory Affairs of Moventia, representing the company expert in sustainable mobility, spoke about the new models of intelligent mobility that are adapted today to industrial polygons. The talk, which had as its objective the search for a mobility model adapted to the technological revolution, its organizational changes and the climate emergency within the polygons, also had the participation of Rosa Maria Sebastian Perez, Vice-Rector of Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship of the UAB; Silvia Solanellas, Moderator of the session and director of the Unió de Polígons Industrials de Catalunya (UPIC); Alejandro Valdovinos, Business Unit Director of Circontrol; Gerard Martret, CEO of Shotl and Vicente Atienza, Innovation Project Manager at the Barcelona Cambra de Comerç.

During the presentation, and with the intention of achieving a new business organization, with a strong commitment to digitization, the Moventia spokeswoman gave as an example some of the services that the company carries out in the Can Sant Joan Polygon, in Sant Cugat del Vallès. He highlighted the city bus and the shuttle bus, which transports passengers from the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya station to the industrial area. And a shared coach on demand.

The Innovation Brunch came to the conclusion of the multiple benefits of having a mobility plan for the Polygon itself coordinated with that of the companies. The importance of it being appropriate and adapted to the existing needs of the companies and their workers was emphasized, both in the field of labor conciliation, as well as that of security in itinere and that of optimization and increase in production in labor activity.

Reference was also made to the economic savings and the reduction in atmospheric and acoustic pollution that results from the reduction in traffic intensity thanks to the public transport service and the optimization of energy consumption in the companies of the polygons.

CityBike Global becomes Inurba Mobility and arrives in Stockholm

CityBike Global, the operator of public individual mobility services funded by Moventia and in which Sherpa Capital currently holds a stake, recently presented its new rebranding process at an event in Barcelona. Following this process, the company will now operate in all the markets where it does business worldwide under the name of Inurba Mobility.

Seven years after the brand was created, this new name reflects the transformation undergone by the company and is also enshrined in a new visual identity that connects with cities, sustainability and growth.

While upholding these values, the company has also maintained a clear international focus. Sherpa Capital became a shareholder in 2020 to boost growth and the results have been highly effective. The company has doubled its sales turnover since it began operating in new international markets over the last two years.

The company announced that, for 2023, it plans to increase billing by 60% on the consolidated growth already seen in 2022 thanks to new projects that have already been signed this year and expects to post a turnover of close to 25 million euros.

This change of branding is a strategic move aimed at further strengthening the project and reflecting the company’s values and mission through the changes, which include a drive to offer services to cities and their inhabitants that can improve quality of life by providing new sustainable and efficient mobility options.

Inurba Mobility is an international company operating in several European and Latin American markets that, thanks to extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of the market, has successfully consolidated itself as the internationally benchmark operator and continues to add new destinations to the list of those where it offers its services.

In this regard, a public electric bicycle service was launched in the city of Stockholm (Sweden) in partnership with Inurba Mobility in May. The first 1,000 units of a total 5,100 that will be deployed around the city by the end of the year are already in place, with the hope that this will become one of the largest bike sharing services in Europe.

The launch of this new service in Stockholm will bring thousands of new, efficient and sustainable vehicles to the city and will be available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For the service offered in this city, Inurba has chosen Vaimoo as its strategic partner for the supply of smart electric bikes. Jordi Cabañas, CEO of Inurba Mobility, said “this new project by Inurba Mobility strengthens the leading European position held by the company in terms of public micro-mobility services”.

Moventia supports mobility initiatives and services that promote the values of sustainability and growth, as well as the search for better quality of life for people through the use of services that foster health and look after the environment.

 

Photo: https://www.inurbamobility.com/