NYC Transit Lab

In New York City, there is an eight week accelerator program specifically for transit companies called the NYC Transit Lab. The goal of this program is to identify and support early stage companies and see how their technology can help the MTA and New York City's transportation infrastructure. What do the companies get? The selected companies at the end of the program get to test our their product or service on one of the largest transportation networks in the world, The MTA. During this past round, NYC Transit Lab accepted applications under two categories: a subway challenge and a bus challenge.

The subway challenge was seeking to have better prediction of subway delays and better solutions for riders when those delays occur. The bus challenge focused on how to make buses faster and more efficient with a emphasis on the use of bus lanes.

The NYC Transit Lab recently announced the four companies who will be rolling out their solutions over the next 12 months, two for each challenge category.

Subway Challenge

Axon Vibe

Axon Vibe is a smart phone app that can analyzes common routes of users and provides push notifications for delays or services outages. The app also suggests alternative transportation options when these service problems occur.

Veovo

Veovo is a service that measures the number of passengers moving through airports in real time. The software can identify crowding and make services more efficient with gate management and other solutions. Using this service in a subway station setting, The MTA hopes that Veovo can assist with staffing of subway stations, change train distribution and assignments as well as using this data to plan more efficient station design.

Bus Challenge

Preteckt

Preteckt uses raw sensor data from buses to predict system and mechanical failures. The hope here is that this service will allow for better preventative maintenance resulting in fewer service disruptions and reduced maintenance costs on MTA buses.

Remix

Remix offers a software service for designing transit systems. They handle transit route planning & adjustments and optimizing road lanes on existing streets. The service also can control and visualize buses, subways, rentable bicycles (CitiBike) and scooters. This type of monitoring service would allow the MTA to visualize and make adjustments in real time to combat service outages, congestion and grid lock of all of those vehicles.

Skip the Bureaucracy

The goal of the NYC Transit Lab is to accelerate companies and give them an opportunity to work with The MTA without the standard regulatory process. Applying for contracts with organizations like The MTA could take years for these companies to actually get their product or service up and running in New York City. This type of red tape can stifle innovation, especially in an industry like transportation which is changing rapidly.

We look forward to seeing the results of these companies beginning operations in New York.