ThingTech – an Atlanta, GA company – announced that it has been selected to deploy their suite of route optimization and dynamic fleet dispatching solutions to Ride Connection. RouteIT™ and TracIT™ provide seamlessly integrated and dynamic route optimization and real-time fleet tracking to improve customer service and improve mobility options for Ride Connection customers. Ride Connections is a leading provider and broker of demand response community transportation services in the Portland, OR metropolitan area and also provides a growing network of community connector shuttles using deviated fixed route services. Ride Connection currently operates five community connector routes. They serve the communities of Forest Grove, Banks, North Plains, Tualatin, King City, and Hillsboro. All services have defined routes with fixed time points while allowing a limited number of customer-requested deviations within a defined distance from the route or stops.

“ThingTech has been a very good partner of ours with our current transit asset management system and shares a similar vision on how technology can be leveraged to improved mobility and the customer experience. We are excited to have them bring their experience in route optimization and dynamic dispatching to the particular needs of our community connector shuttles. Their depth of experience in the field, their enthusiasm to innovate, and a lightweight approach that fits our scale were all key factors in selecting ThingTech to implement this mobility on demand solution. Their real-time routing and dispatching platform, combined with an open API, will allow us to serve our communities more quickly and efficiently,” says Kevin Chambers, CTO of Ride Connection.

Ultimately, the mobility on demand solution will streamline daily operations and collection of data required by funders, capture additional service data related to improve planning, provide real-time service information for customers that is easy to access from a range of devices, automate and optimize real-time route deviations, and facilitate communication between customers, dispatch, bus operators with regard to range of service-related events, and provide open API’s for transit aggregation services and third-party applications.

“This is a very exciting project and it will leverage the latest trends in mobility and transit coordination. Ride Connection’s vision and leadership on service delivery innovation is tremendous. We are very proud to be selected to partner with them on this strategic initiative,” says Tim Quinn, CEO of ThingTech