Local transit technology upstart Spare is partnering with one of the province’s largest transportation organizations.
Spare this week announced a collaboration with BC Transit to deliver a unified digital platform for handyDART transportation across the province.
The Vancouver company says it will work with BC Transit to introduce a standardized model across the 28 transit systems with handyDART, giving riders from urban to rural areas access to booking tools and real-time trip information.
“Standardizing an entire province’s accessible transit network is a major milestone,” posits Kristoffer Vik Hansen, cofounder and chief executive officer of Spare.
“We’re proud to support BC Transit in improving mobility for the people who depend on these services the most,” Vik Hansen continued, “including family and friends of our own team members.”
“This project shows how thoughtful innovation can make public transit more equitable for everyone,” the CEO believes.
Spare integrates transit operations with advanced asset management and maintenance tools to give agencies real-time visibility and proactive decision support with the flexibility to adapt services on the fly and manage costs.
The platform is designed to support the needs of transit agencies and their riders, offering tools for trip coordination, service oversight, and rider-facing digital options, while maintaining local control and governance, according to Vik Hansen.
By unifying data and operations, BC Transit will be able to compare services across regions and optimize operations through modern technology, while improving reliability and rider experience, suggests the entrepreneur.
A provincial Crown agency, BC Transit services nearly two million Canadians across more than 100 communities throughout the province.
The move builds on a similar recent partnership between Spare and TransLink, which handles more than one million handyDART trips annually. Other transit entities the Canadian firm has worked with include Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Bay Area Rapid Transit, and GoDurham ACCESS in North Carolina.
In 2024, Spare raised $42 million from Inovia Capital, which also powered Spare’s $18 million fundraising in 2021.
In 2023, Spare garnered $3 million in federal funding through PacifiCan’s Business Scale-up and Productivity program.
Last year, Spare integrated technology with Google, integrating live routing data from the Google Maps Platform into Spare’s Driver App.
Spare was founded by University of British Columbia students Vik Hansen, Josh Andrews, and Alexey Indeev in 2015.
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