If we’ve learned anything from the past year, it’s that we need to make riding transit as easy and safe as possible – for both fixed route and paratransit riders.
That’s why I’m excited to see Tucson’s paratransit service, Sun Van, digitize their self-service options for their paratransit community and make it easier for paratransit riders to book their trips and get live updates on where their vehicle is. The end result? No more waiting at the curb in the Tucson heat, and up-to-the-minute info on the status of their ride.
Sun Van currently uses our PASS solution for their paratransit scheduling so adding our web and app tools to their tech stack was a simple decision. Now, riders can get all the information they need either via the web (with our PASS-Web tool) or by downloading a mobile app (our PASS-App solution).
One of the key rider experience areas that they wanted to improve was making sure riders knew where their drivers were. They had heard from their riders that it was frustrating to be waiting for a pickup in the span of a 30-minute pickup window, sometimes in poor weather conditions, and not have any visibility into when the vehicle would be arriving.
With the implementation of both PASS-Web and PASS-App, the “Where’s My Ride” feature in the Trapeze solution was able to solve this. By leveraging Trapeze’s on-vehicle technology and the PASS backend, estimated arrival times and vehicle location information is now communicated directly to the rider-facing PASS-Web and PASS-App solutions. The riders can now see, on a map display, where their vehicle currently is, as well as an estimation of the arrival time for the pick-up.
We want to solve riders’ problems, now, which is why it’s so important to get new technology into their hands, as soon as possible.
Coming off another successful implementation of mobile apps on the fixed route side (INFO-App), we leveraged learnings from that experience to get PASS-App deployed quickly. Another technique that was leveraged here was to work collaboratively with Sun Van in an agile approach to tackle the most important pain points first. Working closely with Sun Van, we prioritized getting the most important features to riders first, to deliver positive outcomes quickly. That’s why we launched this project in phases so that the “Where’s My Ride” capability was launched in the first phase, with Trip Booking coming as a fast follow.
In subsequent phases of the project, we’ll also be working with Sun Van to enable self-service trip booking via PASS-Web and PASS-App to further empower their paratransit communities to use the most modern digital technologies.
This is expected to help reduce inbound call center call volumes and rider wait times for trip booking, by extending the flexibility to other self-service channels, most notably, web and mobile.
Want to learn more? Check out a case study about Sun Tran here.
Bus
Rail
Paratransit
