NYC Startup Roadify Makes Subscription Mass Transit Data Available For Digital Signage Networks

April 19, 2017 by Dave Haynes

It appears the TransitScreen guys have some indirect competition – in the form of a NYC startup Roadify Transit – when it comes to providing local mass transport data to screen networks.

Roadify aggregates transit data from more than 400 agencies, bike share programs, and car ride services in the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and Australia – putting it into a single source for display on a variety of screens, including digital signage and digital OOH displays. The company says transit services available through its API covers 95 percent of the 35 million trips taken daily by U.S. transit riders.

Data sources include:

• Real-time Metrorail train arrivals/departures for nearby metro stations
• Real-time bus arrivals/departures for one or more nearby bus stops
• Bus schedules
• Current bike sharing availability
• Current car sharing availability
• News/weather/time
• Transit service alerts
• Emergency notifications

The company has entered into distribution and technology partnerships with several companies active in the digital signage ecosystem, including AVI Systems, Capital Networks, DigiChief, Engrain TouchTour, Four Winds Interactive, Orange Barrel Media/StreetMedia’s IKE SmartCity, and TouchSource.

“Our API service model allows our partners and their customers to focus on creating eye-catching, informational end-user displays without the hassle and expense of managing hundreds of data feeds in different formats,” says Scott Kolber, Roadify’s CEO. “With easy, on-demand access, our partners have total flexibility over the design, branding, and look and feel of how transit information is integrated into their customers’ signage displays — and we’re already seeing the results in a rich variety of deployments.”

The system works off HTML code snippets – meaning as long as the CMS and/or play-out device supports a modern browser and full HTML, the transit data can be readily displayed.

TransitScreen – I’m damn near certain – markets a solution and service, primarily to building operators. I don’t think there is a subscription or reseller model like this. If so, the two companies offer similar end-results, but customers get to those results in different ways.

All or almost all of the transit and related data is open-sourced from local governments and authorities, so there is nothing all that proprietary about this kind of content. The devil, as they say, will be in the details of getting it all, and structuring it all so the data for transit times from Boise, Idaho look and work the same as rail schedules for Boston.