As more people flock to cities, they need to get to work, school, grocery stores, shops and medical centers in reliable and efficient ways. They use public transportation as well as taxi alternatives such as Lyft, and mobile devices to plan and pay for these rides. To better manage the tremendous amount of data generated by all that daily travel, companies and cities are turning to the cloud.
Using the data they gather, cities are able to reduce congestion and improve the traffic flow, which in turn helps cities grow and prosper with smarter planning. Working with Microsoft, Cubic Transportation Systems taps into the cloud as a powerful tool to better and more securely manage data, and also create the flexibility their customers are asking for as they respond to a constantly changing technological environment.
San Diego-based Cubic connects more than 38 million commuters and travelers every day around the world as a leading integrator of payment and information technology, processing 24 billion transactions annually. They create intelligent solutions for mobility management, with a particular focus on transportation agencies in cities responsible for managing road networks and public transportation.
In Miami, Cubic has implemented a system that processes transactions from 850 buses and 23 Metrorail stations. In London, between bus and the underground systems, Cubic serves about 11 million people daily.
Cubic takes a holistic approach to managing the whole mobility system, recognizing the interdependence between the performance of road networks and public transportation, in order to deal with increased urbanization and the challenges of congestion that come with it.
They come up with solutions that help cities integrate data from multiple vantage points and they also create integrated payment experiences that take the friction out of travel.
For Boris Karsch, vice president of strategy for Cubic, it’s not out of the question that someday soon someone could take a taxi to the station, then a train into town and finally a bike share to their workplace using one account. They’d be able to do all this without thinking about how they would pay, where they need to catch these rides and if the train is running on time.
“My dream is that in the not-so-far future, we’ll all live in cities where it’s absolutely frictionless and easy to take any form of transportation,” he says. “Microsoft and Cubic working together have a great potential to accelerate that.”
