TransitScreen is going global

In conjunction with announcing the hiring of Diego Canales as Global Data Partnerships Manager, TransitScreen announced in a blog post its plans to go global.

TransitScreen has displays in the United States, Canada and some European cities such as London, Paris and Dublin, but the tech company wants to expand even more — aiming for cities with larger transportation systems such as Singapore, Copenhagen and Mexico City.

Last year, TransitScreen launched MobilityScore, a website that rates buildings based on their accessibility to various transportation options. Canales joined the team to focus on acquiring transit data and implementing it into the MobilityScore product. The product currently has transit data from 2,700 agencies in the U.S. and Canada. With Canales’s background working at the World Bank and the World Resources Institute, his expertise with information gathering will help expand MobilityScore’s reach.

“In many cities globally, the data about transit schedules exists — it’s just not in a format that can be used by apps or software like ours,” said TransitScreen CEO Matt Caywood. “That’s part of the problem we’re trying to solve — if we can’t tell when the bus is coming, that means the person in that city who depends on the bus to get home definitely can’t tell.”

Caywood said with the expansion, TransitScreen is looking to partner with other companies that specialize in creating and formatting transit data to help make sure people can get around more easily.

“New ideas about mobility (ridesharing, scooters) are spreading internationally like wildfire, ” he said. “That opens the door for international solutions, and our goal is to make getting around easier for everyone, in every city, in every country.”