This summer, my mother and I went on an excursion from Geneva to Lausanne using a geeky combination of commuter trains, national trains, a metro and even a vintage steamship (I have a very patient mother). We didn't plan our day in advance, so instead of buying tickets or passes, we used Easyride on the Swiss National Railway (SBB) app. We checked in with just a swipe on our smartphones at the beginning of each leg and checked out when we stopped to visit a museum, have lunch and at the end of the day. The following day, we got a receipt showing that we were eligible for a special deal. The system even acknowledged that my mom has a yearly pass in Geneva and a nationwide half-price subscription. Instead of sticker shock, she got sticker delight. Find out here how FAIRTIQ got to build Easyride’s brain and watch the following 30 second video on how FAIRTIQ works.
At the time, I had no idea that I would now be part of the FAIRTIQ team, the Swiss startup behind this technology, responsible for bringing it to North America from my base in Toronto. What made me make the jump?
Let's make sense of demand shifts to better plan and allocate resources
With COVID, ridership patterns have become inconsistent as government directives fluctuate frequently, many offices and universities are empty, but essential workplaces are working double duty. In this fiscally constrained environment, agencies must truly understand demand to more accurately plan and adjust services as demand patterns continue to evolve.
While FAIRTIQ is known for its fare technology, a pilot project to map actual journeys made by participating customers - even without charging fares - can be set up in weeks. And of course, all FAIRTIQ products generate valuable insights about travelling patterns and responses to service and pricing changes, while keeping in line with stringent European privacy legislation - GDPR.
Let's do caps
Customers’ transit usage patterns are becoming more irregular, leading to falling pass sales. Caps are an attractive alternative, but they can be hard to implement with legacy systems. FAIRTIQ is Account-Based-Ticketing in a box, which tracks all trips with origin, destination and time, scours through all available deals nationally and regionally, and applies the best deal daily or weekly. No hardware is required; everything is in the cloud.
Let's experiment with pricing to boost ridership and revenue
Just like hotels and airlines, transit agencies experience surges in demand and fairly fixed capacity. Smoothing demand has become urgent to reduce crowding. But unlike industries that have long embraced smart pricing, transit agencies' legacy systems have prevented pricing creativity. FAIRTIQ allows almost limitless experimentation with pricing, ranging from beeline - Fare by Distance - capping, time of day pricing, volume bonuses, usage credits, etc. Ever wondered how users would react to Fare by Distance, caps or promotions? It's easy to find out through the FAIRTIQ app, as pilots or embedded as a feature in another app (SDK). See here how the Cologne region in Germany is using FAIRTIQ to test a Fare by Distance concept and how Göttingen made a beeline to fare by distance in a matter of weeks.
Let's make transit free
Free transit is never really free… but what if it was easier to make it free for customers? With FAIRTIQ, codes can easily be sent to groups of customers to offer free or discounted travel, including with time or geographical limits. For example, an employer can offer free trips to any of its facilities as part of a TDM mandate, or a shopping mall can discount all trips destined to it on busy days when parking lots might be full. Read more about B2B solutions here and how a Viennese university used FAIRTIQ to offer deeply discounted tickets and passes to its students.
Ready to talk?
It's early days for FAIRTIQ in North America. Are you a transit agency, consulting firm or like-minded tech company? Let's talk! In the meantime, find out more about FAIRTIQ products and subscribe to our Business Update.