Avego's iPhone app

Taking place at the Canadian Embassy, Disruptathon features 6-8 companies talking about their disruptive innovations for an audience of 75-100 people. It will be a mix of techies, policy experts, government, and wireless carriers.

Avego’s presentation will include a video demonstration of Avego’s award-winning Shared Transport technology, which uses iPhone and web technology to essentially enable drivers to turn their car into a bus.

Drivers are matched with riders along their way in real time and Avego automatically manages an electronic micropayment transaction at the end of the journey.The system also enables real-time passenger information and includes a comprehensive range of safety features.

If you are interested in attending the event to get a first-hand look at how leading innovations from the U.S. and Canada are helping society reduce energy consumption while building sustainable new businesses, you can get tickets here.

One of the real-time departure boards at the event.

Just a few days before the event, the hot topic on Twitter was how attendees could get to WhereCamp without Driving. Avego took up the challenge and in just 3 days put together a soup to nuts deployment of a shuttle service with reliable real-time passenger information (RTPI) capabilities.

Using Avego’s GPS-enabled mobile data terminal installed inside 2 vans, which were very kindly provided by VPSI, the service ran between the Google campus, Caltrain in Mountain View and the San Jose Convention Center.

Real-time departure boards were set-up at the event, so the 300 attendees could know exactly when the next shuttle would arrive.

The great success of the service demonstrates the positive effect that RTPI can have on ridership numbers, and further highlights the speed and ease of deployment of Avego’s hosted real-time information and management systems.

Wherecamp, “a community-led grassroots conference for geo enthusiasts, developers, artists, and theorists”, has grown from a small group of people three years ago to over three hundred participants in 2010.

Avego would like to thank VPSI for providing the vans on such short notice and everyone who used the service during Wherecamp.

One of two vans kindly supplied by VPSI.

Avego’s China office, which was officially opened last October, has just launched 2 new projects that are designed to improve transportation efficiency at the Ascendas IT park in Dalian, where Avego China is based.

Employees at Ascendas IT Park in Dalian

A new Shared Taxi system will save costs for local employers and employees who pay to take a taxi home in the evenings when the public transportation services have ended. The system matches together people traveling to the same areas. Users interact with the system via a touchscreen interface in the lobby of the office building.

On average, 300 of the 3500 people working in the office building take a taxi home in the evening, which amounts to taxi charges of millions of Chinese RMB per year. Avego’s new system will reduce these costs by 40%.

An LED sign displaying real-time passenger information

Avego has also setup its Futurefleet system, with LED signs displaying real-time passenger information for a shuttle bus service between Avego’s office building and the entrance of Ascendas park. Employees can now make better decisions about whether or not to make the long walk to the entrance of the park, or wait for the next shuttle bus.

Anyone interested in learning more about Futurefleet or Avego’s Shared Taxi system should contact the Avego sales team today.

This post is extracted from the Avego monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

President Obama

The DOT requested budget, which can be viewed in full here includes “High-Priority Performance Goals” for the coming year(s).

Additionally, the 2011 budget includes $4 billion to create a National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund to invest in projects of regional or national significance. This marks an important departure from the Federal Government’s traditional way of spending on infrastructure through grants to specific States and localities. The Fund will allocate resources based on demonstrable merit and analytical measures of performance. It will provide planning, feasibility, and analytical capacity to help sponsors identify high-value projects from around the country and then carefully select the most worthwhile projects.

To learn more about securing federal funding for real-time passenger information implementations of Futurefleet, or for a Shared Transport pilot, please contact Avego’s Director of Government Relations, Jason Conley.

In the last year, Twitter has grown in popularity amongst transit agencies in the US as a tool for communicating with their customers about service changes and general news. While the number of agencies using Twitter is still small, agencies are increasingly trying to figure out how it can be of real strategic value.

Some great articles have been written about the business benefits of “tweeting” (such as here, here and here), but the specific role that Twitter can play in your transit agency requires some internal analysis. A general rule of thumb is to start by considering Twitter in terms of “how we communicate with our customers”, including potential customers.

Twitter provides some specific benefits to transit agencies, such as the ability to provide real-time service updates to customers, but it also offers more traditional marketing benefits, such as generating leads and web traffic. Once a decision has been made about how Twitter will be used to communicate to the world, then it can be assigned to a particular group with specific objectives.

When deciding how to use Twitter in your agency, look towards other related organizations that are already using Twitter, by searching for “#transit” on Twitter.

Avego uses Twitter to communicate the latest in transit related news and technology. You can find us at www.twitter.com/AvegoUSA

Sean O'Sullivan

Mr. O’Sullivan is joining other transportation industry luminaries during this three hour workshop, which takes place on January 10th (1.30PM – 4.30PM), to discuss carpooling, vanpooling, ridesharing and the use of mobile devices to enable real-time shared transport.

The workshop will focus on strategies for reshaping the political, policy, and practical framework for carpooling and vanpooling and will be a catalyst for reinvigorating and elevating this modal choice to meet transportation’s greatest challenges: climate change, energy security, traffic congestion, quality of life, environmental damage, and budget constraints.

To learn more about this workshop you can visit the TRB site here.

Sean O’Sullivan is founding partner at Avego and previously co-founded MapInfo, a $175 million software and services business, headquartered in New York State.

US Department of Transportation

The money represents the first batch of funding by the Obama Administration for its Livability Initiative, a joint venture of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“This represents a significant effort to promote livable communities, improve the quality of life for more Americans and create more transportation choices that serve the needs of individual communities,” Secretary LaHood said. “Fostering the concept of livability in transportation projects will stimulate America’s neighborhoods to become safer, healthier and more vibrant.”

A maximum amount of $25 million per project will be made available from approximately $130 million in unallocated discretionary New Starts/Small Starts Program funds. Eligible projects include streetcars and other urban circulator systems. Priority will be given to projects that connect destinations and foster the redevelopment of communities into walkable, mixed-use, high-density environments.

Transit operators interested in acquiring Futurefleet^TM to enable reliable real-time passenger information (RTPI) for their fleets can now apply for this funding.

Avego has compiled two documents with more information on funding opportunities for transit agencies in .pdf format, which are now available here and here.  Contact information is provided on each document if you have more questions or would like assistance in applying for these grants.

“We really appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm for the pilot, and the feedback we receive every week has driven the improvements and new capabilities in Version 2.0,” said Avego’s Pilot Programs Manager, Audrey Linnane. “Everyone is looking forward to trying it out for themselves, and to the upcoming expansion of the pilot to more staff and students.”

Focus Group at UCC

Avego’s UCC pilot aims to expand affordable commuting options for staff and students by providing a marketplace for drivers to offer their unused seats to other people in real time. 20 staff and students regularly use Avego’s iPhone app, while many hundreds more have registered their interest in participating in the next stage of the pilot, as both drivers and riders.

As well as being featured in the New York Times, and other local, national and international press, the pilot was also recently the focus of this evening news story on Irish national TV station TG4 (note: this video is in the Irish language, with English subtitles).

Avego’s Futurefleet, which is built on top of the same transport management infrastructure that Avego’s Shared Transport consumer application runs on, is seeing an explosion of growth and acceptance in North America.

Avego’s original, and still unique, strength of allowing consumers to advertise and / or book seats in passing vehicles provides cities and transit agencies with something they have longed for in their bus and public transit networks: an inexpensive, responsive and rapidly deployable solution for real-time passenger information.

In the last month, 3 more North American cities, which will be announced soon, have signed on to roll out Futurefleet-equipped buses. The attraction of the Futurefleet system is not only the cost, which can be up to 10 times less expensive than legacy technologies, but also the increased speed, capabilities and convenience of the Avego web-hosted solution.

Avego has just opened its San Diego office

Avego has just opened a new office in San Diego, which will provide post-sales support to our growing list of customers in North America. The new office is headed up by Leon Wong, who joins Avego from OneTouch – a leading provider of interactive distance learning applications, where he filled the roles of Senior Content Developer, Sales Engineer and Project Manager.

Held at the Burlington Hotel in Dublin, the Software Industry Awards recognizes world-class contributions by indigenous software firms to Ireland’s smart economy.

Avego at the Software Industry Awards

Avego was also selected as a finalist in the “Technical Innovation” and “Sales Achievement” categories, and was the only company to be a finalist in three categories.

Speaking at the awards, ISA Chairman Paul Sweetman said: “The companies and individuals that we have recognised tonight have generated fantastic value for customers and investors this year. These talented individuals will drive Ireland’s future economic growth.”

This award is the second award that Avego has received recently, having already won the “High Potential Start-up” award at the IT@Cork awards in October, and demonstrates Avego’s excellence in providing software for improving the efficiency of passenger transport.

2009 Software Industry Awards Winners:

Company of the Year 2009: Openet
Emerging Software Business Award: Avego
Sales Achievement Award: Percana
The Technical Innovation Award: iTab
Corporate Social Responsibility Award: Norkom Technologies
Collaboration of the Year Award: Local Social
Software Person of the Year: Paul Kerley, CEO of Norkom,
Student Medal: Yuandong Zhu of UCD

More information about these awards is available here.