When we started TransitScreen, our first customers were government agencies, so logically, we thought they were going to be our main customers! We quickly learned that wasn’t going to be the case - even though real-time information is one of the best marketing tools available to transit agencies, few agencies yet have the vision to invest in improving customer experience. 

TransitScreen was started to solve a problem: the need to simplify your transportation choices by giving you a single place to find all your real-time transportation information. Until now, we’ve focused on the experience of apartment residents and employees by helping you get from point A to point B fast with a simple glance at TransitScreen while you’re on your way through the lobby of your building. We’ve saved millions of people time by increasing their awareness of their transportation choices.

In 2006, I was in San Francisco working on a graduate degree in neuroscience. San Francisco is a city that has always boasted a variety of public transportation options - multiple subways, streetcars, buses, and of course cable cars. Even 12 years ago, before Uber, Lyft, bikesharing, and e-scooters, there were a lot of choices, and I had 3 or 4 different ways to get to work.

GTFS-realtime is the emerging standard for bulk real-time transit data. If you’re at a transit agency looking to provide software developers with information to create apps like TransitScreen, you’re probably considering it!

At TransitScreen, our commitment to environmental sustainability is inseparable from our company’s mission. At its core, our product is dedicated to helping people make more informed  decisions about how they get around cities, with the goal of increasing the sustainability of the transportation system, the sector of the US economy with highest carbon emissions.

One of our long-term goals is to improve the design quality of information in buildings and other public spaces. Our designers keep abreast of trends, sweat the details, and test the usability of the results — like our new Futura theme, which was recently rolled out to all our customers.

Transportation has changed more in the last 10 years than the previous century. Our mission at TransitScreen is to make information about these proliferating public and private transportation choices accessible to everyone - janitor to CEO, young to old, regardless of what language they speak - to save time and money, and increase the sustainability of our cities. We have found that public information displays have a big impact on transportation choices.