Bay Area Transit riders get improved first and last mile connections with Swiftly and The Routing Company
New partnership delivers guaranteed on-time transit connections for passengers, ensuring a seamless experience for riders in Fairfield and Sonoma County
January 2, 2024 – New York, New York, USA: The Routing Company (“TRC”), a global on-demand vehicle routing and management platform partnering with cities to power the future of public transit, and Swiftly, the industry’s leading transit data platform, have launched a joint approach that dramatically improves on-time transit connections.
The partnership leverages the real time transit feed specification or “GTFS-rt” data usage across more transit modes in TRC’s customer deployments, thereby enabling TRC’s Transit Connect™ feature to work – meaning more options and on-time connections for passengers.
GTFS and GTFS-rt are common standardized formats of data distribution used to provide relevant transit system data to passengers, such as transit schedules and associated geographic information.
While GTFS use has spread rapidly since its introduction in 2007, it is not yet universally adopted in the United States, with just over 75% of transit agencies using GTFS today*. This means some public transit trips are still not tracked in real-time, meaning there is no way to project on-time transit connections for passengers. Even for those that produce GTFS-rt, there are often accuracy issues related to operational issues, software limitations, and/or hardware failures, which collectively pose challenges to any application trying to ensure connections with fixed route transit systems. TRC and Swiftly aim to change that with hyper-focused care for GTFS-rt quality and trip planning algorithms.
Swiftly is the leading transit data platform provider of GTFS-rt (the data standard for real time passenger information) to transit agencies, supporting over 2 billion passenger trips per year for more than 150 transit agencies in 8 countries. Its data engine ingests all possible GPS and assignment sources, and applies its custom prediction algorithm to ensure the most complete and accurate information for all passenger-facing applications, boosting prediction accuracy by up to 50%. Beyond accuracy, Swiftly takes special care to ensure that realtime predictions are created for all vehicles in service, and importantly removing predictions for all canceled service, thereby preventing any surprise missed connections.
"Our partnership with Swiftly is positioned to advance transit accessibility, while providing greater confidence to passengers that they’ll make their connections on time,” said James Cox, Chief Executive Officer, TRC. “Our products are perfectly complementary; not only expanding the reach of critically-needed GTFS data from Swiftly, but leveraging it to supercharge our Transit Connect feature which guarantees on-time onward transit connections for passengers.”
TRC’s Transit Connect™ feature guarantees connections for passengers to fixed route networks using real-time data. The feature was developed by TRC as a solution to improve the passenger experience, and boost the reliability and efficiency in connecting to onward transit modes.
With the partnership, Swiftly’s GTFS-rt data is provided for transit agencies where data is otherwise unavailable or unreliable, thereby supercharging Transit Connect™ to deliver even more options for on-time transit connections.
“We are really excited to work more closely with The Routing Company,” said Jonny Simkin, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Swiftly. “By pairing Swiftly's highly accurate passenger information system with The Routing Company's Transit Connect feature, we can ensure that riders catch their connection to their fixed route network, helping to increase ridership and reduce congestion in the cities we serve,” said Jonny Simkin, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Swiftly.
The Swiftly and TRC approach is already making an impact around the San Francisco Bay Area. Riders viewing fixed route transit options for FAST Transit can rest assured they will have less than a 3-5% chance of missing the bus if arriving at the exact displayed time, which is a best-in-class accuracy rating for bus transit networks. Similarly, for riders seeking to catch a Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (“SMART”) train via Transit Connect™, Swiftly’s predictions mean a less than 0.5% chance of missing a train if riders arrive as instructed, and >90% accuracy overall. Together, TRC and Swiftly are offering unparalleled reliability to riders.
“We have been leveraging TRC’s Pingo technology to improve connectivity to places like the Sonoma County Airport Station – which means our riders need to be running on-time,” said Eddy Cumins, General Manager, SMART. "Leveraging real-time data for Transit Connect translates to a highly reliable service, minimizing the likelihood of our riders missing the train. This level of dependability aligns with our goals for robust first and last-mile transit solutions."
FAST Transit in the City of Fairfield, California, is also leveraging Swiftly’s GTFS-rt through TRC’s Ride Pingo app to power its new service – FAST Connect – which offers on-demand and commingled paratransit service. TRC’s Pingo Journey™ feature provides fixed route time options for riders to plan their transit journeys.
“The fact FAST riders can see real-time travel options for fixed routes is a critical part of delivering reliable transit service,” said Diane Feinstein, Transportation Manager, City of Fairfield. “By using Pingo Journey – powered by Swiftly GTFS-rt feeds – FAST riders know they can get where they need to go on time. This has helped minimize wait times and enhance the rider experience, meaning we are delivering a service that riders can truly count on.”
Pingo Journey™ is a multimodal journey planning feature integrating TRC’s real-time routing technology with public transport infrastructure. Using Pingo Journey™, riders can book on-demand rides and plan their ongoing fixed-route journeys from the single Ride Pingo™ app.
TRC’s award-winning Pingo platform includes the Drive Pingo™ and Ride Pingo™ apps and the Pingo Dashboard™ operations management tool, which together provide on-demand, paratransit, fixed, and flexible transport that enhances ridership of existing transport networks.
Pingo has moved over 750,000 passengers to date. To learn more, visit theroutingcompany.com. To connect with the TRC team, email move@theroutingcompany.com.
For information on Swiftly, visit goswift.ly.
*Predictors of Early Adoption of the General Transit Feed Specification
About TRC
Founded by MIT researchers and rideshare industry veterans, TRC is a global on-demand vehicle routing and management platform that partners with cities to power the future of public transit. Leveraging proprietary and unrivalled artificial intelligence, TRC delivers routing from multiple points of demand to one vehicle while enabling greater transit equity, accessibility, cost efficiency, and sustainability. Its leading product, the Pingo™ app, offers on-demand or advance trip requests and can operate in on-demand, flex, fixed, or paratransit mode.
With a team spanning ten countries, TRC directly supports international operations and customer growth through hubs in Brazil, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Learn more at theroutingcompany.com.
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