9 features we launched at our Product Keynote Showcase

Our inaugural Product Keynote Showcase event was an exhilarating success! Thanks for being a part of it. Here’s a recap of the main releases.

In the keynote, Josh Andrews, our COO, also gave you a sneak peek at our upcoming roadmap. It’s going to be an exciting next few months!

👀 New features to keep a close eye on

Spare Engine & GOLD

Cancellations, no-shows, new bookings, and unexpected delays all play a role in degrading the efficiency of services running on Spare. Our long-term vision of eradicating the compromise between rider convenience and cost is something that we’ve been building towards for a long time.

At the heart of our software is Spare Engine, our routing and scheduling algorithms, designed to enhance on-time performance and vehicle efficiency.

Spare Engine and Global Optimization of Live Duties (GOLD) helps your operations team:

• Implement real-time routing, scheduling and optimization
• Organize your duties in the most optimal manner
• Steadily increase on-time performance

It weighs several factors along with avoiding lateness to find the best place in the duty manifest for each trip, ensuring even the most experienced dispatchers have the support they need to manage the day.

CapMetro’s Access program replaced outdated paratransit technology with Spare. Within the first month since implementing Spare Engine along with the rest of the platform, CapMetro witnessed over 92% on-time performance across over 100 active vehicles. Learn more about the case study.

Live Messages

To keep service running smoothly, it’s crucial for drivers and dispatchers to stay in close communication.

Live Messages help your dispatchers:

• Send information that’s clearer when written down
• Abstain from chatter on the radio
• Avoid saying things you’d rather not say out loud

For drivers, we’ve added 1-tap responses so that they can message back without needing to type. To a much safer experience for drivers on the road!

Mission Control & Live Requests

Large mobility operations, and especially paratransit operations, are incredibly complex. Mission Control & Live Requests is Spare’s command center for dispatchers. We’ve heard incredible feedback on this tabular view over the last year that allows dispatch and operational teams to get a birds-eye-view of their operations and OTP for the day.

The best part? There’s so much dispatchers can do with this data – monitor the Live Map in real-time or identify trends in OTP and drill down into problem areas by filtering between drivers or services.

Mission Control & Live Requests helps your operational and dispatch teams:

• Get more insight, visibility and control at all times
• View aggregated OTP for the day – including completed and predicted trends
• Feel confident that you know where the operation sits at all times – even if you’re on the go

Manual Intervention Tools

Things go wrong all the time when running demand response services. It’s high-risk, yet high reward. Spare has been working hard to build , especially when things do go wrong. For example, like if a driver forgets to log a pickup or drop off or if cases where they tap the wrong button by mistake.

Our suite of Manual Intervention Tools help your dispatchers:

• Proactively fix issues that occur – because they undoubtedly do
• Productively navigate situations caused by human error
• Maintain accurate data for the National Transit Database reporting and operator billing

Open Fleets

Spare’s Open Fleets has been a game changer for public-private partnerships. At our recent keynote, we talked about the challenges the industry faces, like recent staff shortages, rising demand and operational costs.

Those are some, but not all, the reasons why we built Open Fleets. To date, we’ve powered over 1 million rides while lowering the cost of offering those rides by up to 30%.

Open Fleets helps operational teams:

• Curb driver shortages by supplementing dedicated fleets with available non-dedicated fleets
• Dynamically increase capacity, while lowering cost-per-trip
• Offer lower wait times and more spontaneity to passenger experiences

Most importantly, Open Fleets is what you make of it! You can configure a range of factors in the back-end that control how Spare Engine makes decisions on each fleet deployment. For example, if you prefer a dedicated operator to manage long-distance trips and a TNC, like Uber, to manage shorter trips, you can set it using Fleet Limits.

Spare Engage

Eligibility teams manage a ton of rider eligibility applications. In fact, the bigger the operation and the larger the ridership, the more complex the process becomes. That’s why Spare is thrilled to have introduced a brand new way to manage paratransit eligibility – one that centralizes, digitizes and automates the entire process. Yes, that means all of screening, evaluating, communicating and processing applications!

Spare Engage helps eligibility teams:

• Digitize the back office, helping agency teams work more efficiently
• Unifies customer records and segments riders to provide exceptional service
• Reduce call volumes about cases and status through self-serve rider options

For riders, Engage (the admin portal and the Rider app collectively):

• Makes starting applications a breeze
• Promotes autonomy during the eligibility process – riders can submit cases for review and check the case status on their own schedule

AI Search

We’ve heard time and time again from our customers that an intuitive interface trumps all. And we know that organizations handle a lot of data, so finding the right information can be a challenge. At our keynote we launched AI Search (formerly known as Superbox), to address this challenge head-on.

Next time you're on a call and find yourself stuck deep in a duty's itinerary and need to quickly navigate to a rider's profile, use AI Search, our AI-powered search tool, to reduce the # of clicks to get there.

AI Search helps dispatch teams:

• Sift through vast amounts of data that take up valuable time
• Navigate to any page and use powerful filters to find what you’re looking for

Notification Preferences

Creating a more personalized experience is what really drives the needle forward on rider communications. That’s why Notification Preferences, a new feature that allows riders to choose their preferred communication channel and language for notifications, is so important.

With Notification Preferences, we're addressing two critical needs for transit teams:

• First, riders can select their preferred language for notifications, extending our commitment to inclusivity and accessibility. Whether your riders prefer English, Spanish, or another language, we've got them covered.
• Secondly, riders can choose their favorite communication channel. Whether it's a phone call, SMS, email, or push notifications, riders can opt in or out depending on their preference. This is particularly important for agencies required to offer this choice, ensuring compliance while enhancing customer satisfaction

Bulk Messages

We know that an informed rider is a happy rider. With Bulk Messaging, transit administrators can reach riders through their preferred channels, including SMS, push notifications, phone calls, or emails. This versatile tool enables you to swiftly schedule or send critical updates and announcements to targeted rider groups, ensuring they are well-informed about service changes, weather impacts, or upcoming events.

Bulk messages helps transit administrators:

• Communicate to riders en masse
• Send critical updates to targeted rider groups

Plus, when language and channel preferences are updated for each rider, these messages will be received in the right channel, increasing the chances of it getting seen.

Looking for an instant replay of Spare’s Product Keynote? Watch it here. See you at the next one!