There are seven major components that make up Spare Platform:
The Spare Launch & Analyze Admin Portal provides administrators real-time and historical overviews of system performance, system management, and passenger/vehicle management. The goal is to enable access to all data, and big data analytics, in real-time. Spare Launch includes support for several transportation services, including Pooled OnDemand and Fixed Route, with more added on a continuous basis.
The Spare Open API (Application Programming Interface), organized around REST, allows other systems to easily interface with the Spare Platform, a drastic difference compared to other solutions on the market. An Open API platform can bring a wealth of benefits, such as integration opportunities with transit aggregators like the GoPass app, Transit app, Google Maps, Citymapper, and more. The Spare Open API is available at sparelabs.com/docs.
The Spare Driver iOS/Android App is used by the vehicle driver. Drivers log in to their driver profile and receive information related to their zone, pickups and stops. The Driver app also is directly integrated with detailed turn-by-turn directions. In future autonomous vehicle operations, the Driver app will not be needed.
The Spare Rider iOS and Android apps are used by passengers to plan and execute their trips. Passengers use the app to sign up as a user, manage their user profile, book trips, track vehicles, and more.
The Spare Routing and Pooling Engine (Spare Engine) leverages the latest developments in big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to intelligently predict how to best route and dispatch trips in real-time. The Spare Engine matches and routes vehicles in the most optimal and efficient manner, taking into account travel patterns of a region, open traffic data, current vehicle resource allocation, current demand, and past trips. The longer the system operates, the smarter the routing engine becomes, reducing wait times and optimizing the system for higher passenger throughput.
The Spare Pay module can be used to handle a number of fare collection methods, such as cash, credit card, prepaid debit cards, and transit ticketing systems (such as GoPass and Hopthru). Spare Pay can also be used to give permanent or promotional discounts to specific user segments.
Spare Realize is a fundamentally new way to plan optimized transportation systems. At its core, it is a transportation network planning and simulation tool that can be used before or during a transit operation to run full transit simulations at an accelerated pace. Spare Realize takes into account several data sources and set parameters to calculate a number of different outputs, such as expected costs, ridership, reach, wait times, on-time performance, and optimization options.