The Rodalinets project, developed by the NeTS research group, led by Miquel Oliver, a professor of Engineering at UPF, and David Cano, a UPF alumni and graduate in Computer Engineering, was granted first prize in the third edition of the Antena TrenLab awards last Thursday, 14 November, during the Entrepreneurship Night event. These awards are in recognition of innovative solutions to improve sustainable and inclusive mobility, and have become established as an outstanding initiative for entrepreneurs, as they offer financial support and business acceleration programmes to bring projects to market.

Rodalinets has created a mobile app that provides real-time information about trains, including expected waiting times. Through the application, Rodalies users share their location anonymously in real time, while an expert system calculates the waiting times of the next trains. “This is an advanced system that collects the location data of passengers on Renfe’s R1 line who have the app installed and collaborate indirectly by sharing information completely anonymously”, Miquel Oliver explains.

Over the last decade, the efficiency and reliability of the Rodalies service in Catalonia have suffered a significant decline. Serious delays have increased by 135% since 2012 and have affected around half a million commuters each day. Initiatives like Rodalinets offer new tools to improve the reliability of the service, increase user confidence and promote the use of public transport.