Last December, the US Census Bureau reported that Texas grew by nearly half a million people in the previous year. The state’s growth rate, the third highest in the country, drove its total population to more than 30 million.

With this influx of people comes a challenge to provide mobility services that allow the environment and communities to thrive. That means enabling essential journeys and trips for leisure and shopping – all of which are crucial for driving prosperity in metropolitan, small urban and rural areas.

Tackling transit’s major goals

It was great to attend the South West Transit Association (SWTA) Conference last week, and hear from four Texan transit agencies who shared their experience of using the GoPass app to tackle these goals.

The app was developed by Kuba in partnership with Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) to meet a variety of objectives. Supporting the transition to digital payments, it eases the burden and cost of cash collection. 

Additionally, the combination of simple, convenient payments and real-time, multimodal trip planning makes it easier for riders to access mobility services for complete journeys – from the first to the last mile.

Following the initial development, any transit agency can deploy DART’s ready-made GoPass solution, or launch its own agency-branded version. So far, eight transit agencies are on board, with several to follow in 2024.

At the SWTA conference, Maxime Paul, Director of Customer Experience Strategy at DART, took to the stage, joined by Rita Patrick, Managing Director of Public Relations, Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority; Chris Mandrell, General Manager, Citibus; and Rebecca Walner, Chief Financial Officer, Tulsa Transit.

The panel discussed their reasons for investing in GoPass, centred around a need to unify public and private mobility and expand network reach. A single app for riders to plan and pay for journeys using public and micro-transit services ticked most of the boxes. With paratransit integrations coming soon, another crucial part of what they need will be covered.

Evolving to meet future needs

Kuba’s mobility platform, which provides a foundation for this multi-tenanted app, is continually evolving. The panellists agreed that one of the major benefits of deploying GoPass is the ability to make use of existing and future integrations.

Another advantage they highlighted was the speed and efficiency of buying and deploying the app with DART as the vendor. They were surprised by how supported they felt and how little pressure there was on their agencies’ time and resources. Onboarding was fast, taking around 4-8 weeks to complete.

Driving enjoyment of the destination

Jesper Thor Rasmussen, CEO of Kuba’s product development team in Denmark, says:

“It gave us great pleasure to hear that the latest module to be released on the app – for events promotion – is already helping agencies to create a link between the journey and the destination. 

“When planning trips and buying travel products, users see graphics advertising what’s going on in the region. If they decide to go to an event, it’s easy to click-through to our route planner to connect a seamless journey.

“There’s nothing more rewarding than hearing from our customers about the benefits of GoPass to their organisation and the communities they serve. Thank you to everyone on the panel who shared their experience.”

Next stop: Texas

We’re attending the Texas Transit Association Annual State Conference and Expo in San Antonio on March 15-20. We look forward to introducing our mobility platform – the engine behind GoPass and our Account-Based Ticketing and contactless open payment solutions. Get in touch to schedule a chat, or drop by booth #110.