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30 Oct

Product Launch – From Mass Transportation To Maas Transportation

ZIG™: New Mobility as a Service Product Launched

COLUMBUS, OH, 10/28 — ZED Digital (ZED) launched a new and innovative Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platform on October 24 called ZIG™ at the California Transit Association Conference in Long Beach California. This unique smart mobility platform eases the journey for transit customers, public transit agencies and smart cities towards a future with more sustainable mobility. The launch opened with remarks by Gary Coles, Strategic Advisor for MV Transportation, the leading provider of paratransit services and the largest privately-owned passenger transportation contracting firm in the United States. According to Gary when you see a product that can revolutionize the industry you get excited about it. ZIG takes a wholistic approach to transit system from the collection of data to how it is used to increase ridership.


ZIG streams transportation data to your mobile device much in the same way Netflix streams entertainment. It enables transit customers to view multi-modal transportation options that combine bus, rail, rideshare, bikeshare, taxis, parking availability, entertainment, landmarks and other points of interest in one single interface, thereby greatly reducing finger fatigue for customers. It combines a unique Internet of Things (IoT) technology to pay for these multiple services with just a few clicks.


“ZIG is the premier tool to bring a complete MaaS solution that includes multimodal trip planning, hands-free ticketing and payment as well as deep analytics capability to the North American Market. The transit customer can now find real-time transportation options, paonay and board the transit vehicles with their phone in their pocket” according to Sumithra Jagannath, President of ZED Digital.


The public launch of ZIG has been a journey in the making for the past 18 months which began with ZED stumbling into the public transportation by winning a competitive bid to redesign the Central Ohio Transit Authority’s website (cota.com). Following the successful public launch of this website in September of 2017, ZED made it possible for COTA users to view the position of buses, service delays and alerts in real-time through their mobile devices. This was made possible by ZED’s data aggregation platform which aggregates and presents data in a personalized manner from multiple data sources that don’t talk to each other. Since the COTA launch we have found a much larger use for this data platform, the opportunity to power a larger transformational shift that is just beginning in North America. We expanded our platform into a full-fledged MaaS platform with multimodal trip planning and integrated payment.


Greater Cleveland RTA and TARC in Louisville KY have since become clients and have started using the MaaS solution and analytics.” says Jagannath.


With the advent of on-demand real time transportation services such as Uber and Lyft, many transit agencies exploring a change in their strategic direction to transition from being transit operators to Integrated Mobility Managers. They now aim to deliver mobility services including all public and private transportation providers within their region and beyond in a single unified app. ZIG provides the technology that will enable this transition. “ZIG can assist with data collection on travel patterns, as well as provide a seamless travel and payment experience for transit users” says one of the attendees, Mona Babauta, Deputy General Manager – Bus Division, Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District.


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