Dr. Elliot Siemiatycki, Vice President of Innovation and Strategic Initiatives with RideShark, presented “Achieving Unified Mobility” on December 11, 2020.
RideShark is a company that provides Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) by building custom-branded web and mobile applications for organizations like transit agencies, large corporations that have campuses, and university campuses. Among their features, they use real-time trip planning and transit route planning (GTFS), trip logging, trip metrics for tracking and reporting, and in-app payments and communications. Their mobility platforms support mode choice through a multi-modal trip planning engine that promotes sustainable options like carpooling, public transit, biking, and walking.
Through their 15 years of operation, RideShark learned several lessons from a digital-first mobility approach, in which customers look up options online first.
- Trip planning and logging supports sustainable travel modes by ‘nudging’ people to book their travel commute plans in advance.
- A “set it and forget it” approach where trips are planned lets people see transit options and makes it easier to follow through.
- Multiple modes such as carpool, active transit, and new mobility solutions can support, rather than substitute for public transit.
- Proper design can enable people to have better awareness on transportation hubs for supporting existing sustainable mobility solutions.
- Incentives as well as in-app payment and communications are key tools to promote flexible mode choice and earn customer loyalty.
- An incentive management platform for assigning points to actions and trips can gamify trips to make them fun and engaging. Each customized app can focus on a particular aspect like highly rewarding public transit use or carpooling. These rewards can vary from public transit passes to gift cards or raffles.
- Digital transformation in transportation includes holding personal info of Canadian users, which requires privacy and cybersecurity protocols as well as data hosted in Canada.
- More automation leads to more questions with privacy. There is a balance of usability with privacy, and this becomes a bigger question as there is more integration with 3rd parties.
RideShark plans on growing mobility options available to end customers and partnering with other companies like Blaise to integrate on-demand transit solutions. However, integrated payment and solutions with third parties is still a challenge because everyone wants activity to happen on their platform. This cuts off information flow, making it hard to capture vital data such as if the trip was completed when going from the original app to an integrated third party app.
Dr. Elliot Siemiatycki is the Vice President of Innovation and Strategic Initiatives with RideShark, one of the leading enterprise commuter management platforms on the market. Elliot is a seasoned and passionate thought-leader in the automotive and mobility sectors with 10+ years of experience as a policymaker, professor, published author and industry consultant. In his previous role, he was the Portfolio Lead for Mobility Innovation within Ontario’s Ministry of Economic Development. Elliot holds a PhD in Economic Geography from the University of British Columbia.
Presented by University of Toronto ITE Student Chapter.