Uber operates Moovit for transit data to offer a new public transport option built into the application

Last weekend, transportation giant Uber announced a new partnership with transit technology company Moovit, founded in Israel, that will provide Uber users with new transit options.

Uber will integrate Moovit Transit APIs into its application, with a first launch in Denver, Colorado, where riders will be able to plan their journey with real-time information and end-to-end instructions. Uber plans to expand into other US cities over the next few months.

"As we plan to become a one-stop-shop for transportation in your city, our cyclists need the right option at hand for every trip," said David Reich, Transit Manager at Uber.

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"Often, it can be faster or cheaper to take public transport than any other form of travel, and we want to give our riders a simple way to access this option directly from our application", a- he declared.

Moovit provides real-time information on the fastest public transport routes (bus, train and subway), is available in dozens of languages ​​and has 350 million users in 88 countries. It is expected that they exceed one billion users by 2021. The "Waze for public transport", with reference to the company founded in Israel that developed a system Participatory navigation, bought by Google in 2013 for more than a billion dollars.

A composite screen captures Moovit application. Photos via Moovit

Moovit also operates the largest transit data repository in the world from more than 7,000 public transit agencies and sells badytics to municipalities and transit operators through its Smart Transit suite, a platform providing information in real time on the movements of people, optimal routes, waiting times and location. buses and trains and other data for network management. Moovit claims to generate more than a billion data points of motion per day through crowdsourcing of users and thousands of local publishers around the world.

With this new partnership, Uber users who use the app will enter their destination and will see a "transit" option available alongside other available transportation options in their city. Once selected, they will be able to see the available transit routes that will take them to their destination, as well as the departure and travel times, and receive directions to walk to the transit stations, said Moovit in a statement.

Moovit co-founder and CEO Nir Erez said in a statement: "Uber is a visionary company that has fundamentally changed the way people access mobility in cities around the world. Moovit is proud to partner with Uber to expand its offering to consumers and add transit planning options to its application. "

"Moovit's mission is to simplify urban mobility around the world and we want to be part of all urban travel in the coming years," said Erez. "It means partnering with other global leaders in urban mobility like Uber, as well as owning and running our own Mobility Hub as a Service (MaaS), which we license to cities , municipalities and transport agencies around the world. "

Reich said that Uber was "delighted to work with Moovit to enable the creation of transit data and route planning in real time in the Uber application," adding that "the only thing I can do is to use it. Moovit's global footprint will enable us to offer transit integration worldwide. "

Uber and Moovit were previously partners in 2016 to offer Moovit users the opportunity to request an Uber from the app. It is available in 131 cities in 22 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Italy, Spain, France and Singapore.

Uber has taken a number of strategic steps to become the "one-stop shop" for transportation options. Last year alone, she launched a scooter sharing service, acquired the Jump Bikes electric bike company to launch a pilot project to share bikes without a dock and made a strategic investment in starting electric scooters. Lime as part of a $ 335 million round.

In addition, last year, Moovit entered into a partnership with Mobileye, a Jerusalem-based technology company owned by Intel, which develops state-of-the-art driver badistance technologies to integrate its public transport data into the navigation system of Mobileye.