April 29, 2025
Spare Eligibility Rider Hub
The new Eligibility Rider Hub gives riders a central place to track application status, resume saved applications, and start new ones easily. Plus, all eligibility forms now feature a modern UI, improved accessibility, better validation, and auto-save functionality to prevent lost progress. What’s new:
Track the status of submitted eligibility applications.
Start new applications and resume saved and unfinished applications with ease.
Auto-save functionality to prevent progress loss on long applications.
View the Eligibility Rider Hub help guide here.
Please contact your Spare representative to enable this feature!
Other improvements:
Other improvements:
Allowed Trip Types on Admin Panel: Control which trip types can be booked in Spare Operations, like disabling "Leave Now" trips for paratransit services.
Ad-hoc Driver Breaks Agencies can now insert breaks at any time during a live duty to ensure drivers take proper, scheduled breaks through the intended functionality — rather than pausing duties incorrectly.
Improved Detour Config: Customize detour settings like minimum detour time, calculation basis, and max time in vehicle for better pooling and trip flexibility.
Fleet Area Restrictions: Agencies can now assign specific zone boundaries to each fleet, ensuring vehicles only serve trips within their designated areas. This is especially useful for mixed microtransit and paratransit fleets, as it prevents vehicles from being routed outside their intended zones.
April 15, 2025
Rider Representatives
Let trusted partners book and manage rides for your riders
Sometimes riders need a little extra support—whether from a caregiver, a staff member at a care home, or a hospital coordinator. With Rider Representatives, you can now authorize trusted third parties to schedule, monitor, and cancel rides on a rider’s behalf. This makes trip management easier and more secure, while easing the load on your call center staff.
Learn more about Rider Representatives here.
Targeted Optimization for Open Fleets
Better performance, less manual work
We’ve expanded Targeted Optimization in Spare Engine to take even more off your plate. Now, when a trip is at risk of being late or goes unmatched, Spare can automatically rematch it to an Open Fleet—like Uber, Lyft, or taxi providers using MTI, iCabbi, or Uzurv.
This helps agencies keep trips on track and riders happy—without needing extra dispatcher intervention.
Learn more about Targeted Optimization for Open Fleets here.
GOLD & Targeted Optimization just got smarter
We’ve extended how early GOLD and Targeted Optimization get to work—GOLD now starts 12 hours ahead of a shift (up from 2), and Targeted Optimization kicks in up to 24 hours before a trip (up from 3). Targeted Optimization also uses Deep Search more often, helping find better matches earlier and improving on-time performance.
Refresh your memory on how Spare Engine makes trip-matching decisions here.
Smarter Force Match, smoother operations
If you’re a dispatcher, you know Force Match well. With this new improvement, Force Match places trips in the most logical spot on the manifest—not just at the top—reducing disruptions and opening up more pooling opportunities. This helps maintain smoother schedules and more efficient routes.
Learn more about this update here.
Interested in trying any of these new features? Reach out to your Partner Success Manager to get it enabled.
Other improvements
Other improvements
Export rider requests From the Rider profile, you can now export all of a single rider’s trip requests with one click.
Low Wallet balance notifications: Riders will be notified when their Wallet balance falls below a set threshold. Notifications are sent via the rider’s preferred channel (SMS, email, or in-app). Agencies can customize the low balance threshold in Spare Launch.
Wallet top-up notifications: Riders will now receive a confirmation notification when their Wallet is successfully topped up, sent through their preferred channel.
Grouped transaction notifications: If your organization has Grouped Transactions enabled, riders will receive a summary notification when a grouped charge is applied. This includes total amount, number of rides included, and the date of the charge—helping riders reconcile their balances with confidence.
Organization switcher in the main menu: Users can now switch between multiple organizations directly from the main menu—making it easier to manage services across agencies.
GTFS Flex export updates
Agency Phone and Organization External Name are now included in GTFS Flex exports.
Booking Message and Booking URL fields have been added to Services, enabling agencies to share how and where to book trips via GTFS Flex.
March 18, 2025
Keep ADA paratransit trips compliant and on time
Spare now automatically calculates detour limits based on the equivalent fixed route trip length and uses this to guide how trips are dispatched, ensuring riders aren’t delayed beyond what they’d experience on a bus. This removes manual checks, streamlines operations, and simplifies NTD reporting. The first phase of this release is currently available for Leave-At Trips only. Interested in enabling this feature? Please contact your Spare representative.
Other improvements
Other improvements
Added multilingual support for callers that authenticate by PIN when speaking with AI Booking Agents
Included ability for AI Booking Agents to add a new rider payment method
Improving query speed for charge records
Added count badges for Eligibility case tabs
Included how-to-ride context for multimodal journeys containing fixed route legs
Fixed break location icons now remain on the map after navigating away from a duty
Added ability for users to specify stops as driver break locations
March 4, 2025
Recurring trips just got easier—now available in the Rider App
Riders can now book recurring trips directly from the Rider App! Whether it’s a weekly grocery run, regular medical appointments, or a daily commute, riders can easily schedule trips that repeat on their terms—no need to call in every time.
By bringing this capability to the Rider App, we’re giving riders more flexibility while ensuring agencies maintain full control over recurring bookings. To enable this feature, please contact your Spare representative.
Streamlining duty edits have never been simpler
You spoke, we listened! Admins can now adjust duty start and end times even if trips are impacted. A new confirmation modal lets them proceed while moving affected trips to an "unmatched" state for Spare Engine to rematch. Available for agencies with Optimization Pro. Speak to your Spare representative to learn more.
Let drivers take breaks at the right place, every time
Spare now supports scheduled driver breaks at fixed locations, improving compliance with union agreements and keeping operations running smoothly. Drivers are automatically navigated to their break spots, with breaks starting and ending seamlessly based on location and schedule. This ensures consistency, reduces disruptions, and factors break travel time into scheduling for better efficiency. → Learn more.
Understand why Open Fleet trips don’t match
When a trip doesn’t match with an Open Fleet like Uber or UZURV, agencies can now see why—whether it’s due to eligibility restrictions, vehicle availability, or other factors. This new visibility, available from the Trip Request page, helps agencies troubleshoot issues faster and improve service reliability.
This feature will be enabled for all customers at the end of March. Interested in early access? Speak to your Spare representative to learn more.
Other improvements
Other improvements
A minor version update of the Spare Driver app has been published to improve readability, enable organizations to enable viewing the map when the vehicle is idle, and show scheduled breaks in the full manifest
Services can now have both Internal and External names, allowing agencies to simplify the names that appear for riders
Request page URLs have been simplified for easier link-sharing. Old links will continue to work
Multiple accessibility improvements have been made. Spare's default font has been updated to use Inter for readability, phone numbers are automatically formatted with spacing, Eligibility forms can be submitted through keyboard inputs, and the position of the status bar on the request page has been updated
Request Cancellation Reason and Cancellation Notes are now options for Rider Notifications
Eligibility tables have additional filtering options
The Export action is now positioned with other action buttons
Fixed a bug causing Duty Time Travel views not to save in the Japan region
February 18, 2025
Smarter, more adaptive trip assignments
Spare Engine already optimizes trip assignments in real-time, but some scenarios require human dispatchers to step in—like balancing detour limits, fleet costs, or trip constraints. Automatic Overrides lets Spare Engine make intelligent adjustments in these edge cases, reducing dispatcher workload while keeping service efficient and reliable. → Interested in enabling this feature? Speak to your Spare representative to learn more.
Activity
Spare’s new Activity feed makes investigations faster and more intuitive by allowing you to see a full timeline of the trip or eligibility case you’re looking at. Expand events to see exactly what changed then add comments or tag members of your team to make collaboration easier than ever. → Learn more.
Other improvements
Other improvements
Enabled using zones and stops across multiple services, reducing the time required for service planners to launch additional services
AI Voice agents can now be configured to swap between English and Spanish in response to the language used by the caller
AI Voice bookings can now be requested using custom stop names for pickup and dropoff locations
Archiving Riders is now the default behaviour, with deletion of an archived rider's profile being a separate action
Spare Operations users will be warned if they attempt to archive a rider profile with an active wallet balance
Resolved an issue that allows Rider Web bookings to be left in a pending state
Improved speed when searching for multi-leg journeys
February 3, 2025
Keep operations running smoothly with disaster recovery backups
Spare’s Offline Driver Schedules ensure uninterrupted demand response operations during system or network outages. Secure, automated backups store critical trip and driver data, while password-protected manifests keep operations running smoothly. The recovery portal allows drivers to complete trips without interruption, ensuring service continuity for riders who depend on you. → Learn more.
Save on Stripe fees with grouped transactions
Lower your Stripe fees and simplify payment management by bundling transactions over six days. This means fewer processing fees for your team. → Learn more.
Stay focused and work faster with peek view
Quickly access and update rider details in a side panel—no more jumping between pages. Make trip changes, update payments, or add favorite locations without losing your place. → Learn more.
Other improvements
Other improvements
Admins and Service Planners can now search for an address while editing or reviewing a service
Added ability to cancel multiple duties at once, matching the flow for bulk deleting duties
Forms in the Rider App are now easier to use via screen reader
Rider App Announcements now display in order of priority first, and created date second, so existing high priority announcements will no longer be sorted behind newer low priority announcements