Transit Tech Lab advances to pilot phase

There’s never been a bad time to innovate at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but with the agency currently under pressure to modernize into a sleeker, more efficient version of itself, the timing is ideal for the Transit Tech Lab – an accelerator program for new products and technologies aimed at solving public transportation problems – to move into its next phase.

On Tuesday, the MTA, along with the Partnership for New York City, announced that four out of the six companies participating in the Transit Tech Lab accelerator would actually get to pilot their technology with the MTA. Two of the companies chosen have solutions geared toward the subways – Axon Vibe’s smartphone app technology could help deliver personalized info about service changes to customers, while Veovo would analyze subway station crowding to improve the distribution of MTA resources. The other two companies participating in the pilot phase will focus on buses – Preteckt studies vehicle data to better predict system failures, while Remix’s software uses demographic data to more quickly produce the bus network redesign.

These four companies will work with the MTA to test and implement their products over the course of a year. The two companies that didn’t advance to the pilot phase are Palisade Labs, a company that uses computer vision technology to assess obstructions in dedicated bus lanes, and PIPS Technology, a machine vision technology provider.

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