A new UI for Avego's iPhone app

For drivers, there are many changes that make it easier than ever to offer unused seats to other people in real time, including:

• Improved design for day and nighttime driving
• Improved information about routes and stops, including the time and distance to the ultimate destination
• Driving without having to pre-record the route
• Auto-acceptance of ride requests
• Simpler creation of routes between favorite places
• Auto-display of map view on approach to pick-up
• Reminders of scheduled departure times
• More sophisticated ride matching
• More than 20,000 new Avego stops added to the network

For riders, there is a new web-based user interface that is optimized for use with any mobile phone (not just iPhones). The Shared Transport web application includes a simpler process for booking rides and more detailed statements of a person’s journey history.

In addition to these great new features, the update also realizes improved reliability and performance, as well as compatibility with the iPhone’s new iOS4 operating system.

• Download Avego’s free iPhone app here »
• Learn more about Shared Transport »
• Follow Avego on Twitter »

Driving alone is costly, both for the planet and for your pocket. However, it’s often very easy to forget all the annual costs associated with driving your car. Fortunately, AAA releases an annual report on average driving costs, which make it easier for us to understand the financial benefits of Shared Transport.

Traffic congestion.

The latest figures released by AAA show that the average cost of driving a medium-sized car over 10,000 miles in 2010 is $0.73 per mile. Over a year, this adds up to $7,300 and includes the cost of fuel, maintenance, tires, insurance, taxes, depreciation and financing, etc.

With 87% of the 1.1 billion trips taken by Americans every day occurring in personal vehicles, there are also high social costs, in the form of increased traffic congestion, C02 emissions and reliance on declining fuel resources, with the average vehicle consuming 550 gallons of fuel per year.

By enabling on-demand real-time ridesharing, Avego Shared Transport makes it easier for commuters to lower their costs and help the environment. Not only is the cost of the journey automatically and fairly shared between the driver and the rider, but every user can also keep track of their financial and C02 savings online.

Join the Avego revolution today, by signing up at www.avego.com.

• Learn more about Shared Transport »
• Download AAA’s Your Driving Costs report »
• Follow Avego on Twitter

As the leading voice for the use of smart technology to address America’s transportation challenges, the ITS America Smart Solution Spotlight award highlights the best and most innovative use of intelligent transportation systems to address national and regional transportation challenges.

“This concept of providing real-time on-demand commuting services could play a major role in increasing interest and participation in carpooling,” said Scott Belcher, President and CEO of ITS America. “The use of intelligent transportation technology will help create a new, on demand transportation system using wasted seat capacity in cars that are already on the road. If successful, this could result in significant improvements in traffic efficiency and the environment.”

ITS America

While most people understand the benefits and efficiency of carpooling, it is typically not flexible or convenient enough to meet the demands and busy lives of today’s commuters. Avego Shared Transport uses ITS technology to make carpooling more flexible, reliable and convenient by providing a marketplace for drivers to offer their empty seats to other people in real time.

This on-demand, real-time ridesharing system, which is now available as a free iPhone application, essentially incentivizes drivers to run their car as a bus, saving money by accepting ride requests from riders along their route.

A major upgrade of the iPhone application will soon be released.

You can read the official press release here.

This perfect storm created an America of single occupancy vehicles, urban sprawl and commute times expanding from a few minutes to hours a day. The days of hitch-hiking were gone and carpooling became the ugly step sister for many years, considered dangerous and inconvenient by many.

However, in the last five years, as the US becomes more environmentally responsible and resistant to foreign oil dependency, we’ve come to realize a long-term solution needs to be found. Beyond hybrid vehicles, electric cars and public transit, we have to get more people to change their narrow view of owning a vehicle for themselves and instead think in terms of maximizing seat capacity for a better way of life.

The Avego solution is simple. Reduce the number of single occupant vehicles on our roads by creating a network of Shared Transport vehicles, in which people are matched together in real time to occupy a single vehicle, thereby saving gas, money and harmful C02 emissions.

Now, you can become part of the solution by sharing your car in a safe and economically positive environment by broadcasting empty seat availability and choosing to take on riders (for compensation). Conversely, as a rider, you can broadcast your destination and be matched in real time with drivers going where you need to go, when you need to go.

Safe, efficient and environmentally friendly… that’s the Avego Shared Transport solution.

Avego Shared Transport is available as a free iPhone app.

Riders do NOT need an iPhone to request rides – they can sign up for a free account to book rides online. Create your free Avego account here.

Learn more about Avego Shared Transport here.

Follow Avego on Twitter.

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

“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.

The conference, which was attended by 4,000 transport professionals, provided a perfect venue for Avego to present our products to key influencers of transport policy from all over the world.

Avego would like to thank everybody who visited Avego’s stand at the exhibition and we look forward to following up with the many new contacts and friends we made at the conference.

Employing 15 engineers and support staff, the China office will provide Avego’s Shared Transport and Futurefleet solutions for the Chinese, Japanese and Korean markets, as well as export China-manufactured Avego hardware solutions to the worldwide market.

The official opening of Avego's new office in Dalian, China

Avego’s focus on improved efficiency of passenger transportation networks has enabled it to double its staff in Ireland over the past 12 months, even during the difficult challenges of the current financial crisis, as it continues to expand its international presence.

The official opening was attended by Minister Kelleher; Chairman of Enterprise Ireland, Hugh Cooney; and Ireland’s Ambassador to China, Declan Kelleher.  Present from the city of Dalian were the Chinese Government’s Dalian High Technology Zone’s Vice Deputy Li Wei Ming, Bureau Director David Mao, Dalian Software Association Director Shun Pen, and Jeffrey Tan, General Manager of the Ascendas IT Park.

Speaking at the opening, Minister Kelleher said:

“Avego is a leading Irish exporting software company and one of the most prominent software companies in their field.  This announcement marks a significant step in their successful exporting strategy.  The establishment of this office in China will enable Avego to better access the potential in the Chinese market.  The company’s success in this market will help the further growth and development of their Irish base in Cork.”

Minister Billy Kelleher

The office, which includes a China Network Operations Center, is located in the Dalian High-Tech Zone.  Dalian, a city of 6.2 million people, is one of the most highly regarded places in China for the development of software, and also one of the fastest growing cities in China.  Avego is thought to be the first Irish technology company to establish in the city of Dalian, as well as the province of Liaoning, a region to the Northeast of Beijing with a population of 42 million people.

“We are thankful for the tremendous reception and co-operation we’ve received from the Chinese government in the establishment of our Asia-Pacific headquarters,” said Sean O’Sullivan, Managing Director of Avego Ltd.  “We look forward to working with transportation operators to face the unique challenges present in the massive and rapidly modernizing China.  Our staff in Ireland, China and the United States are combining efforts to produce products that will improve transportation networks worldwide.”

Sean O'Sullivan, Avego's Managing Director

Making its American introduction one year ago in California, Avego has been providing its software and hardware solutions to transport operators in North America, Europe and Asia.  Avego’s iPhone application has been used in over 60 countries worldwide, and sparked a global media buzz on its release, with Avego being feature prominently by The New York Times, CNN, Fortune, and named by Silicon Valley’s San Jose Mercury News, as one of the most innovative technology companies at that time.