Sonder is how Beta Mobility tests a proposed mobility service against the place it would serve: who lives there, what they can reach today, and what the service would take to operate.
We run the study with you, with the sources and assumptions beside the results.
Discuss a service or study areaStep 1 of 4 · People
Folk, Beta's synthetic population, models households, ages, work and access to a car from public statistics, where those sources are available.
Nobody in it is a real person, and households sit in grid cells, not at addresses.
Step 2 of 4 · Place
Beta's Mobilitetsatlas compares everyday destinations reachable by public transport and by car.
A gap in access gives us a place to investigate; it does not tell us whether people would use a new service.
Step 3 of 4 · Service
We test a zone, a fleet and limits on waiting and detours through Sonder's operational simulation.
It places each request in a vehicle's schedule when capacity and service limits allow it, and records why other requests are turned away.
The results show the vehicle hours and distance required under those assumptions.
Step 4 of 4 · Trade-offs
A Beta analyst sets the options side by side with you, with their assumptions and exclusions in view.
The operating figures go on to a separate financial assessment or wider transport model.
Sonder does not produce the business case.
We agree the proposed speeds, operating area and support with the project team and write them down.
We mark which conditions the model can represent and which need separate assessment.
Requests a service turns away stay in the results, with the reason.
A figure that needs data nobody has supplied is left empty, with the reason next to it.
What role should a new service play in the network you already run?
Where is access poor today, and could a service help?
What would a deployment need to work?
What can mobility credibly add to a new place?
Sonder: the realisation that every passer-by has a life as vivid and complex as your own.
A service proposal should start there: with the people it is meant to serve, the journeys it could support and the practical limits of its design.
Tell us where, and what you are deciding.
We will tell you what a study would show, and what it could not.
Discuss a studySonder is used in studies led by Beta Mobility.