This paper reports the demonstration of a new travel concept, Flexible Service Routes, to reduce public funding for Specialized Travel Service (STS) for disabled and elderly persons in Gothenburg, Sweden, and to improve mobility for the large group of elderly not eligible for such shared-ride taxi service. To improve efficiency in the existing Travel Dispatch Centre, three new telematic applications were developed and validated: (1) automated booking of travel, using interactive voice response systems; (2) automated trip notification, to warn passengers 15 min before pick-up time; and (3) driver booking, using a mobile lap-top and the Mobitex network. Verification showed that user acceptance of trip notification was good but that the automated booking had to be simplified in order to be accepted by the elderly users. A new version with a simpler dialogue was thus introduced in the summer with better results. The new travel form is very popular with users and publicly funded local STS taxi travel has been reduced by over 50%. FlexRoute has a good chance of being expanded over the whole city.
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