Leaders from NEORide — a council of governments representing 25 transit agencies across Midwestern and Western states — and its participating agencies discuss their approach to fostering regional collaboration through ambitious TransitTech projects. These projects include software for regional mobile ticketing and call centers (“EZFare” and “EZConnect”), both of which are connected through software and demand-responsive transit with Via.
The panelists will address their goals for regional transit, the advantages of their multi-agency approach for procurement and implementation, and the results of their collaborations with agencies and software providers alike.
Panelists include:
Becca Green, Chief Communications Officer – Rock Region METRO
Katherine Conrad, Director – NEORide
Susan Gettum, Chief of Staff – Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority
Sarish Kasat, Partnerships Principal – Via Transportation, Inc.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.35 million people across the world are killed in road traffic accidents every single year. The problem is particularly acute in the United States, prompting the Department of Transportation’s new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant program, with $1 billion available. Grants are available for both planning and implementation of projects to promote safer streets, including acquiring technology like Remix Streets, which was recently used to redesign some of the most dangerous intersections in NYC. In this webinar, you will hear everything you need to know about available funding and Complete Streets best practices.
Presenters include:
Beth Osbourne, Director, Transportation for America
Andrei Greenawalt, Head of Public Policy, Via
Rachel DiSalvo, Grants Lead, Via
Arti Harchekar, Partner Success Manager, Remix by Via
There’s little doubt that public transportation can be a catalyst to kick a local economy into high gear. Increasingly, the most innovative city leaders are coming up with creative ways to deploy a relatively new type of transit to meet their communities’ specific development goals. Microtransit, which is capital-light and quick-to-launch, is having a measurable impact on job, healthcare, and educational access nationwide.
Interested in learning more about how cities are designing and launching microtransit services tailored to meet their economic development goals? Curious to hear the results from these services? Watch now to hear how microtransit has increased access to jobs, schools, and healthcare by more than 40% in transit-rich cities like Seattle, Washington, car-dependent regions in Memphis, Tennessee, and rural communities like Wilson, North Carolina.
Presenters include:
Casey Gifford, Senior Planner, King County Metro
John Lancaster, AICP, Chief Development Officer at Memphis Area Transit
Olivia Blahut, Director, Via
On-demand transportation is now a tried-and-tested way of increasing service coverage, driving ridership, and increasing mobility for seniors and riders with disabilities. But without the right data, it can be extremely difficult for agencies to plan microtransit services that will address these concerns and truly complement, rather than duplicate, existing modes.
Join expert transit planners from the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) in Salt Lake City and PalmTran in Palm Beach County, Fla., as they walk you through how they evaluated where to invest in on-demand zones. Panelists will use interactive maps to show how they decided on service areas, which data sets they reviewed, what tradeoffs were made, and how they ultimately decided on where on-demand transit provided the most bang for their buck.
Hear from:
- Eric Callison, Manager of Service Planning, Utah Transit Authority
- Nina Verzosa, Strategic Planning Manager, PalmTran
- Kyle Boehm and Amanjeet Anne, Partner Success Team, Remix by Via
The conversation also featured live Q&A throughout, but if you have any lingering questions please feel free to reach out to the team.
Combining pre-booked ADA trips with other same-day or on-demand services seems like a no-brainer: offering compliant services while both saving costs and offering a more flexible experience to riders. It’s the best of both worlds. But how should agencies get started, and what other agencies are doing it successfully?
CTAA and Via recently teamed up to host an intimate session on new developments in paratransit in the US, including detailed discussions of ‘commingled’ services launched by Green Bay Metro in Wisconsin, Golden Empire Transit in California, and Mountain Line in Montana. Via’s Partnerships Lead, Terence McPherson, covered topics like:
- What drove these agencies to update their paratransit programs
- Where these communities have seen benefits
- How agencies have overcome any challenges
- Why TransitTech is necessary to these leading agencies’ vision for the future.
The conversation also featured live Q&A throughout, but if you have any lingering questions please feel free to reach out to the team.
In the spring of 2021, Arlington introduced RAPID, the nation’s first on-demand, autonomous public transportation service, into its transit network through a partnership with Via and May Mobility. Ever since its launch, RAPID has enabled local residents to experience useful, convenient, and efficient autonomous transit and has enhanced the accessibility of the city’s entire public transportation system.
In this webinar, industry leaders provide hands-on guidance for leveraging innovative, AV-powered public transit and strategies to plan, fund, and grow these services. Panelists also reveal Arlington RAPID’s performance data and discuss rider feedback.
Featuring:
- Mischa Wanek-Libman, Executive Editor, Mass Transit
- Ann W. Foss, Transportation Planning and Program Manager, City of Arlington Texas
- Daisy Wall, Director of Government Business, May Mobility
- Meghan Grela, Autonomous Lead, Via
In 2020, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop and his team at City Hall experimented with a new solution to the city’s long-standing mobility challenge using a new form of transit: on-demand microtransit, in a partnership with Via. Jersey City residents can book trips from their smartphone, or by phoning a call center, to go to where they need to go in a shared ride.
In a recent webinar from Next City, the city’s transit leaders explained what has made this public-private partnership — which recently celebrated its two-year anniversary — so successful, discuss the history of their collaboration, and share learnings and recommendations for urban leaders looking to pursue similar partnerships.
Join Dan Berkovits, our VP of Strategies, in a discussion with:
- Michael J. Manzella, Director of Transportation Planning, City of Jersey City
- Elias Guseman, Senior Transportation Planner, City of Jersey City
What are the best ways to deploy autonomous driving technology for public use? Just ask the experts.
In a recent webinar, hosted by Partners for Automated Vehicle Education (PAVE), industry leaders in the field of autonomous transit discussed why transit agencies are increasingly interested in pursuing autonomous driving technology, its unique benefits, and how to maintain passenger security in potentially driverless vehicles.
Join Ed Niedermeyer, Communications Director for PAVE, in conversation with:
- Nathaniel Horadam, Managing Consultant and Autonomous Vehicle Specialist, Center for Transportation and the Environment
- Tim Haile, Executive Director, Contra Costa Transportation Authority
- Meghan Grela, Autonomous Lead, Via
On January 20, 2022, Rodger Lentz took to the stage at the 2022 North Carolina Transportation Summit to shine a light on RIDE, the City of Wilson’s popular on-demand microtransit service.
Lentz outlines the daily struggle of a transit-dependent resident in the pre-RIDE era, when local buses only ran once an hour and operated with limited transparency and reliability.
“Can we do better for that individual? I think that’s where RIDE comes in.” — Rodger Lentz
Powered by Via’s dynamic routing technology, RIDE launched in September 2020, replacing all existing fixed routes with an on-demand service to better meet the community’s diverse traveling needs. Whether a RIDE is booked through an app or a dedicated dispatch phone number, Wilsonians are able to enjoy city-wide rides for as low as $0.75 for senior citizens and students, or a standard fare of just $1.50.
Lentz demonstrates how this accessible, affordable mobility option is positively impacting residents — the majority of whom make less than $25K a year and do not own a private vehicle.
74% of riders say the money they saved by using RIDE is one of its biggest benefits, and 48% agree that the service has enabled them to access or maintain employment.
“We were able to cover — not 40% of the city — but 100% of the city with transit service. And we’re able to do that with 15-minute average wait times,” Lentz says. “And the fact that we were able then to take the same resources that we had for fixed route and cover an entire city. Now [we’re] connecting people to jobs that were out of reach for them.”
RIDE’s performance is the gold standard of how public transit can rebound when executed smartly — even in the midst of a global pandemic.
“Our transit ridership went up 140% over fixed route, so it’s been a real game-changer in Wilson and we’re very proud of it.”
When Karen King and her team noticed several years of declining ridership across both their paratransit and fixed routes services, they knew a change was needed. As the CEO of Golden Empire Transit (GET) in Bakersfield, California, King manages a sprawling 106 square mile zone that serves a largely agricultural and oil-producing community with nontraditional commuting patterns. Clearly, fixed routes weren’t cutting it.
That’s why, in 2018, GET introduced a microtransit pilot that then led to an RFP requesting integrated demand-response software. As King puts it, “I said: Why are we using several different software products for services that are so similar and why are we sending two vehicles to pick up two different passengers who are essentially making the same trip?”
Via now powers integrated non-emergency medical transportation, ADA-compliant paratransit, and microtransit service for GET. Watch the Quick Chat, hosted by Mass Transit Magazine‘s Executive Editor Mischa Wanek-Libman, to learn more about the move that has built greater equity and efficiency into the agency’s operations.