Ecolane Launches X4MaaS, the Netflix for Transportation

An expectant mother waits at the bus stop for a 7:15 a.m. on-demand service to take her to her weekly 8 a.m. doctor’s appointment. After her appointment, she takes the bus to work. She is quickly able to find a nearby cafe to grab a cup of coffee while she watches the bus arrive in real time on her phone. At lunch, she has a craving for her favorite seafood and finds a restaurant within 3 miles. She plans a trip with Uber this time. 

With just a few clicks, multimodal transportation options stream to her in a single app, no matter the time of day or night. 

X4MaaS helps your riders overcome transportation planning and booking hurdles with one single, real-time, mobile platform. Transit agencies now have a single technology platform to aggregate all of your rider tools and transit services, communicate status and schedule changes, provide real-time booking, receive payments, operate an account-based ticketing back end, and provide onboard fare validators. 

What is X4MaaS?

Ecolane X4MaaS is a fully integrated mobility planning and trip booking platform that’s compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This multimodal trip planner app is designed to help agencies seamlessly connect people—like that mother-to-be at the bus stop—to fixed-route transit, microtransit, paratransit, and more. Need options such as Uber and Lyft, Bird, Spin, taxis, and even Greyhound buses in the same interface? You need X4MaaS. It’s like the Netflix for transportation because we deliver what you need by integrating with them all.

X4MaaS helps improve public health and aims to restore confidence in public transit. Part of this includes integrating a hands-free mobile ticketing solution that reduces crowding in the farebox area. Our ADA-compliant fare validators and account-based mobile ticketing also link trip planning with contactless, queueless boarding and get people where they’re going quickly. So far, X4MaaS is available in more than 100 cities, continuously growing to help agencies of all sizes transform the rider experience.

The Three-Tiered Gateway Changes the Game

Unlike traditional MaaS architecture, Ecolane’s X4MaaS offers a multitiered federated gateway aggregation for maximum scalability. The result? Easier trip planning, booking, and payment for your passengers.

Multimodal Trip Planning

X4MaaS stands out because it supports trip planning and booking across the transit spectrum. Multimodal trip plans across fixed-route, paratransit, microtransit, on-demand, rideshare, third-party mobility options, and more are integrated into a single interface and are fully ADA-compliant. Passengers can book trips directly through the mobile app or with interactive voice response systems such as Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri, and it can automatically add their trips to the real-time scheduler.

Hands-Free Fare Validation

X4MaaS integrates hands-free mobile ticketing, which enables riders to board with the phone in their pockets. Our ADA-compliant fare validators, combined with our account-based mobile ticketing, are the first in the market to provide cashless, contactless, and queueless boarding. Our validators scan smartphone tickets “over the air” while phones are still in your pocket or bag. ADA riders can just board, and an audible beep from the validator informs them when they are checked in. No lineup and manual scanning are required while boarding.

No Internet Connection

Just because they’re using an app doesn’t mean passengers need internet service. With our ADA-compliant fare validators, mobile phones don’t need to receive active data or Wi-Fi signals to validate payment through the X4MaaS multimodal trip planner. Agencies can still stay in touch to provide timely and relevant information. Additionally, riders can use our built-in GPS to see the location of their vehicles and receive arrival notifications.

The Benefits of X4MaaS

The mobile-first approach behind Ecolane’s X4MaaS multimodal trip planner comes in handy for users ranging from a mother waiting at the bus stop to a businessperson rushing from one off-site meeting to another. The app provides several potential benefits, helping riders and agencies get the most from using it. Some of the top perks of the system include:

Convenience for Riders and Operators

X4MaaS makes transit a little simpler. For one thing, it reduces the dwell time—or the time a customer spends waiting in a queue—associated with cash and paper tickets. On top of this, the diminishing balance or prepaid feature facilitates contactless payments. For operators, this means they waste less time on both collecting payments from the farebox and counting the money in their farebox.

Affordability for Agencies

Given the time and processing needs behind traditional cash or card-based payments, mobile makes more sense. App-based ticketing and payment with X4MaaS reduce the cost of fare collection while enhancing public health.

Decreased Trip Loss

As an agency, one of the last things you want is to lose out on potential earnings. With automatic push notifications helping riders remember upcoming trips, you significantly reduce no-shows, cancellations, and lost revenue.

Make Trip Planning Easy

Paying with cash, memorizing bus schedules, and the management that goes along with that belong in the past. X4MaaS and its three-tiered gateway challenge the status quo in transit and provide freedom and flexibility for riders and agencies alike. 

Ecolane makes transportation easier than ever with our easy-to-use multimodal trip planner. Get the solution for your agency. Schedule a demo today to see X4MaaS in action.