2024 marks a significant milestone for Optibus: our tenth anniversary as a company and a decade of commitment to innovating an industry that positively impacts billions of people everyday: public transportation. The “Decade of Impact” blog series dives into Optibus’ evolution, where we are today, and our vision for the future. We hope it brings everyone in the Optibus community closer to the positive impact you make on the world, and inspires more people to join us in making public transportation better. Together.
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Since its founding, Optibus has worked to develop new transportation technologies and tools that create a positive impact on passengers, cities, and the planet. That's in addition to all the people working tirelessly behind the scenes to plan and manage public transportation services.
One of our primary product goals is to unlock simpler, smarter workflows for planners, schedulers, drivers, managers, commercial teams, and more - offering a better way for our users to improve all aspects of public transportation. As part of that mission, in the past ten years, we have built and released Planning, Scheduling, Rostering, Operations, Timetable Optimization, Predictive Runtimes, Performance Suite, Impact Analysis, and more, all united everything within one platform.
From left to right: Optibus Scheduling, Planning, and Rostering.
All that impact-driven technology is backed by powerful cloud computing capabilities and optimization algorithms - the ones we continue to develop in response to the initial math problem that inspired Optibus’ founding - that compute the best potential crew schedules, vehicle schedules, relief vehicles, timetables, and rosters. Our users have performed more than one million optimizations in the Optibus software system, yielding results like PVR reduction, hundreds of thousands in savings, and less corridor overlap.
We have clients using Optibus to better meet passenger demand and increase public transportation ridership. Using our Scheduling product, our clients have also unlocked ways to improve driver work shifts using artificial intelligence and build schedules that account for driver preferences.
Explore the impact of Optibus' product ecosystem on our case study page.
As Optibus has grown, we have looked to broaden our reach and create a positive impact on everyone that public transportation touches. Our acquisition of Trillium enables us to improve the passenger experience by providing the most reliable, up-to-date passenger information systems. There are also the important people behind the wheel: drivers. In 2023, we debuted our first mobile offering, the Driver App, to enhance the bus driver work experience and driver-depot communications (one client saw inquiries to the call center drop by 50%).
The Driver App streamlines communication with drivers, leading to a better work experience in the face of driver shortages.
And we didn’t forget the planet. Our electric vehicle (EV) and zero emission (ZE) solutions support the complex transition away from diesel vehicles and create a greener, cleaner world - whether it’s helping Antelope Valley Transit Authority (AVTA) to become the first 100% electric fleet in the US, creating a 100% electric bus system in Northern Chile, or reducing thousands of tons of CO2 emissions each month. Using Optibus Scheduling, operators have also gained the power to significantly reduce PVR and mileage, reducing both emissions and costs (like La Linea did in Venice).
Supporting these robust technological offerings is an ever-growing ecosystem of partners working with us to transform on-demand transportation, smart charging, zero-emissions vehicles, data analytics, fleet maintenance, road safety, service information, and more.
Everyday, thousands of planners, schedulers, drivers, and more leverage our software and partner ecosystem to realize real impact, from improving service frequency in the UK to optimizing financial and operational results in Singapore to digitalizing operations in Cape Town.
Learn how the people who power public transportation use Optibus to create a difference by visiting our case studies page.
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