The diffusion of the smartphone and the urban sprawl is pushing both private and public actors to revisit the concept of demand-responsive transport (DRT). This paper provides a historical overview of DRT experiences, understanding their pros and cons. In addition, it presents the case study of Mokumflex, a 12-month DRT pilot program that replaced the regular bus service in low-density areas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Based on a close collaboration with the private enterprise that operated the service and also with the local bus operator, we performed an empirical before and after comparison. These insights help to understand the impacts of DRT systems and support (future) design of DRT and public transport. A set of indicators was chosen for the intermodal comparison: travel distances, ridership, costs, Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions and population's perception. Ridership dropped from 78.1 passengers/day to 15.9 passengers/day, however, for being “demand-tailored”, passenger-km reduced even more, going from 1252.8 km/day to 136.6 km/day, hence reducing the costs and GHG emissions per passenger. In regards to population's perception, the system enjoyed a good evaluation.

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The diffusion of the smartphone and the urban sprawl is pushing both private and public actors to revisit the concept of the demand-responsive transit (DRT). Mokumflex is a DRT pilot program that replaced the regular bus service in low-density areas of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for 12 months. The close collaboration with the private enterprise that conducted the system but also with the local bus operator allowed the authors to have access to precise databases, giving this article empirical information for both the situation before and after the implementation. These insights help to understand DRT systems and support (future) design of DRT and transit systems. A few indicators were chosen for the comparison: distances, ridership, costs, Greenhouse Gases (GHG), emissions and population’s perception. The ridership dropped, however, for being “demand-tailored”, the mileage per passenger reduced, improving the costs and GHG emissions. In regards to population’s perception, the system enjoyed a good evaluation.@en