We're excited to roll out a number of new features and improvements. This release includes an updated design to a number of pages throughout the app. Read on to learn what's changed!

The general release date for Rider App 4.0 is June 9. Please note that in order to roll out this update safely, we use a strategy of a gradual rollout. This means that a greater and greater percentage of riders receive the update over the course of one week. This means that 100% of riders will have access to the 4.0 version around June 16-17th.

If you're interested in being part of the beta release for this app, please contact your Spare Representative.

Below you can see a number of before and after screenshots for particular pages. These changes were made with two principles in mind:

If your agency 1) uses Spare as your multimodal trip planning tool and 2) publishes GTFS Real Time data, this update is for you! You can now show the live location of fixed route vehicles directly in the Spare app. Help riders make connections between your on demand and fixed route services with greater ease.

If your agency 1) uses Spare as your multimodal trip planning tool and 2) shares GTFS Schedule data with Spare, this update is for you! You can now customize the home screen of the app to choose which fixed route lines to show.

Head to Settings → General → Rider Interface → Fixed Route Shapes Configuration and you'll see an ability to choose by agency and route type. Here's an example:

Riders can easily set a pickup and dropoff location from the home screen by just tapping on it:

Agencies can now add URLs, phone numbers, and email addresses to the account menu. To do this, navigate to Settings → General → Rider Interfaces → Custom Links. Here's an example of a phone number:

Agencies can also remove certain items from the account menu if they're not utilized by riders. For example, Fleet Agreements are useful for agencies utilizing Open Fleets and sending trips to other providers. But this menu item might not be useful for your riders, so you can choose to remove it. To do so, navigate to Settings → General → Rider Interfaces → Hidden Account Menu Items and choose what to remove.

We're bringing changes to the trip options that riders see. The intention is to make it easier to glance through multiple options and choose the best one. For the changes below, please remember there are three types of trips:

There are also two ways of displaying time information to riders:

In the examples below, you'll see combinations of all of these:

Some of the core benefits of this change include:

For agencies, this change also comes with a helpful feature: Service External Names. When editing a service, you'll notice a new field for Service External Names. If you have lengthy names for your services, this is a good way of cleaning it up for riders. Now, you can have a name that helps identify services internally like "City-Hopper Microtransit in Vancouver" but just a short name that riders know like "City-Hopper" displayed to them.

Lastly, this change is especially helpful when showing other trip options, like those utilizing fixed route services.

There are some design changes, as seen in the comparison at the beginning of this article above under "Single Trip Page". However, there are also some functional differences that we'll describe here.

Firstly, there are two ways of communicating pickup and dropoff times to riders, and you have the choice of which type to use: Windows or Estimated Times.

Now, your riders can login with their email address in addition to their phone number. To do this, simply tap "Continue with email" and follow the prompts from there. For email login to be available for a rider, they must have that email address saved on their profile.

You can learn more about how Rider Representatives works here. This feature allows you to designate caregivers for particular riders and allow those caregivers to book on behalf of riders using the app. Caregivers can track their riders' trips as well.

In this release, we've added the ability for both the rider and caregiver to receive notifications. Previously, just the rider received these notifications.

This is another "Before & After" design change, but there are some functional changes to note:

We've also slightly changed the screen when riders are waiting for their trip:

Easily add new favourite locations from the new search screen by simply tapping on the heart next to the address:

Users on Android can now benefit from a feature that has been available on iOS — auto verification code input. When a user goes to log in and receives a code via SMS, the Spare app now automatically detects that code and prefills it in the app.