RideCo Awarded Contract by Los Angeles Metro to Launch World's Largest Public Microtransit Service

LOS ANGELES, October 29, 2020 (Newswire.com) - RideCo announced today that it has been awarded a $28 million, 3-year contract to provide technology and services to Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) for the launch and operation of on-demand transit in six designated service zones in Los Angeles County. At 100 vehicles, this is the largest ever contract awarded for a public microtransit service.

RideCo's CEO Prem Gururajan says: "We are thrilled to partner with LA Metro to launch this innovative new mode of public transit that will provide an improved customer experience for riders and increase transit ridership," adding, "most of the funds for this project will be invested in Los Angeles County to fund next-generation transit technology jobs in the United States." Additional funding was also approved for operational expenses and to hire new Metro employees to operate the vehicles. Gururajan went on to say that "RideCo is building the world's next-generation transit technology, capable of adapting to the dynamic needs of the future and evolving demographics."

In the procurement report, LA Metro deemed RideCo to be "the industry's top performers in the field of MicroTransit including specialists in software development, modeling and analytics" and found that RideCo's approach "supports the backbone of public transit (the Agency's bus and rail network)."

This award follows an almost 2-year long, highly competitive procurement process that included two stages and drew upon insights and expertise from more than 450 staff from all departments at LA Metro. RideCo's team worked closely with LA Metro staff and municipal stakeholders to design service models which support the agency's goals, including (i) providing high quality shared mobility options, and (ii) enhancing communities and lives through mobility and access to opportunity. After more than a year of extensive assessment of the bidders' technologies and capabilities, RideCo was announced as the sole winner of Part B, the implementation of LA Metro's microtransit project. RideCo outscored the two other finalists in the procurement in every technical evaluation category of the procurement.

While the 6 microtransit zones will launch in phases throughout 2020-2021, this 100+ vehicle project will be the single largest on-demand public transit service in existence once at full scale. You can get more details about the project and the planning and design process in our latest case study: "How LA Metro is Building the World's Largest On-Demand Transit System with RideCo" or you can check out Metro's MicroTransit Pilot webpage for details about where and when the service is launching.

Cities and organizations both large and small around the world are using on-demand transit to solve transit pain points such as low-density area mobility, first-last-mile connections, underperforming bus routes, paratransit and non-emergency medical transit, employee and long-distance commuting and more. Contact us at rideco.com to find out how on-demand transit could help your organization.

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Source: RideCo On-demand Transit