One year, 70 systems: agencies adopt Royale subscription for riders in record time

Just one year after the Transit app launched its Royale subscription service, 70 transit agencies have already signed up to sponsor free Royale subscriptions for all riders. With Transit, agencies can offer the most complete public transit app in a matter of weeks, with custom agency branding, extra features, mobile ticketing, microtransit, and last-mile connections, plus instant rider feedback loops and gamification to keep riders coming back onboard.

Transit operators across the United States, Canada, France, and New Zealand are providing free Royale subscriptions to their riders, including LA Metro, Cincinnati Metro, New Orleans RTA, Saskatoon Transit, RideKC in Kansas City, and Calgary Transit. Millions of riders are able to benefit from a free Royale subscription thanks to their agency’s sponsorship.

Transit is already recognized by riders as a trusted, reliable app to navigate public transit in more than 300 cities worldwide and protects rider privacy with an experience that’s free of advertisements and third-party data brokers. Agencies can quickly deploy Transit’s features to build upon Royale and create their preferred all-in-one app experience.

Agencies seeking a direct feedback loop with riders can use Rate-My-Ride, Transit’s instant intercept survey that’s seamlessly built into the trip experience. Riders are already answering hundreds of thousands of prompts daily about on-time expectations, ghost buses, and crowding. Subscribing agencies can also add custom questions on issues like vehicle cleanliness and customer safety. Results are time stamped and linked to specific vehicles and routes, as well as boarding and alighting stops – all while keeping responses entirely anonymous and unlinked from the user’s personal data and location history.

In addition, Transit’s quarterly Rider Happiness Benchmarking survey provides a longitudinal look at local customer sentiment benchmarked against nationwide trends. And Transit’s APIs mean agencies can integrate the same multimodal trip planning and real-time information that riders get in the app into station signage and websites.

Transit also works with the industry’s leading providers of mobile ticketing, microtransit, and new mobility services like bikeshare and scooters for first- and last-mile connections. This open approach to integration has saved subscribing agencies the time commitment, expense, and risk of procuring and promoting custom apps. Transit brings together the preferred partners of transit agencies, including: Bytemark, Masabi, and Token Transit for mobile ticketing; Curb, Padam Mobility, RideCo, Spare Labs, and Via for microtransit; BCycle and PBSC for bikeshare; and Communauto and Free2move for carshare.

These collaborative partnerships build upon the high-quality open data standards pioneered by the transit industry, like GTFS and GTFS-realtime for fixed-route service; GBFS for bikeshare, scooters, and carshare; and GOFS and GOFS-lite for on-demand options.

How agencies are using Royale

Transit systems in San Antonio, Calgary, and Las Vegas are among the Royale subscribers that have led the way by building out all-in-one offerings with Transit.

San Antonio, TX: In addition to offering all riders Royale, VIA Metropolitan Transit has turned Transit into its complete multimodal app and nearly doubled the number of riders using the app in the past year. The agency began by integrating its goMobile+ ticketing option into Transit in August 2021, then added its VIA Link on-demand service in July 2022 so riders can easily connect on-demand with fixed-route service. Combining mobile ticketing with microtransit has proven powerful: riders can purchase VIA Link fares directly in Transit at the moment they’re planning their trip. Bikeshare is also fully integrated: since May 2022, VIA’s riders have been purchasing San Antonio BCycle passes and unlocking bikes with their Transit account.

“Our daily focus is on enhancing the customer experience, including providing new, convenient tools that make it easier to choose and use VIA service,” said VIA President/CEO Jeffrey C. Arndt. “Partnering with Transit to offer Royale as a free upgrade to customers’ existing app is part of our plan to use innovative transit technology that helps keep San Antonio moving.”

Calgary, AB: Calgary Transit selected Transit as the city’s mobility-as-a-service app in June 2022, replacing its previous whitelabel offering. Immediately, Calgary Transit riders had access to improved trip planning thanks to connecting options in Transit like e-scooters and Communauto carshare, as well as real-time countdowns from Transit’s prediction algorithm that are 52% more accurate than other apps. Just three months later in August, Calgary Transit integrated its On Demand microtransit and My Fare mobile ticketing services into Transit. For the first time, Calgary Transit riders were able to access multimodal connections, trip planning, on-demand, and fare payment in one official app. Today, less than six months after becoming the agency’s official mobility app, Transit serves more than 135,000 unique Calgary Transit riders each month.

“Part of Calgary Transit’s Customer Commitment is to make transit easy to use and informative. By partnering with Transit and offering Royale, Calgary Transit is advancing that commitment,” said Sharon Fleming, Director, Calgary Transit. “For the first time in Calgary, customers can plan a multimodal trip that includes Calgary Transit, shared e-scooters and e-bikes, carshare, and ridehail; purchase tickets; and take On Demand microtransit trips all from a single app. Calgarians have quickly adopted Transit and the many new features available to improve customer convenience.”

Las Vegas, NV: The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada first began integrating its offerings with Transit back in January 2020, when it launched mobile ticketing in the app. Since then, RTC riders have completed 92,000 fare purchases with Transit. In April 2021, the RTC added bikeshare pass sales and unlocking for its RTC Bike Share service in downtown Las Vegas, becoming the first city in the United States where riders could use a single account and app for bikeshare and transit passes. In August 2021, the RTC launched Royale for its riders and soon, the RTC will be adding RTC-OnDemand microtransit service to Transit, as well, bringing the RTC’s transit services together into a single integrated app experience.

Additional transit agencies are slated to roll out free Royale subscriptions to their riders in the coming weeks, and use Transit’s platform to integrate real-time trip planning, mobile ticketing, microtransit, last-mile connections, and rider feedback. With Royale, transit agencies are able to quickly deploy Transit’s fully-featured, privacy-protecting, best-in-class app to connect with their riders and put public transit back at the core of app-based transportation.