At SilverRail, we believe it is important to allow people to travel seamlessly. Our mission is to make it easy to plan, book, and travel, regardless of how many disparate modes of transportation are involved in a journey.
In Sweden, this is already a reality. Our colleagues are already working with rail networks, buses, taxis and other metropolitan transit providers to enable travellers in Sweden to move seamlessly from mode-to-mode. For example, Swedish travellers can conceivably book and pay for all aspects of the following journey via our systems:
Outbound:
- A ride-share taxi from any Swedish post code to Stockholm Central train station
- A high-speed train to Malmo Central train station
- A local transit bus to Trelleborg
Return:
- An Express Coach bus service from Trelleborg back to Stockholm
- A taxi from the train station back to the home destination
Travellers can plan, book, pay, and ticket all segments of such a journey at once. They don’t have the hassle of searching for and going to several websites (the rail website, the local transit website, the express bus website, and taxi websites) just to plan the journey; they don’t have the hassle of processing multiple payments on those different websites; and they don’t have to worry about managing tickets from multiple sources.
SilverRail does more than a superficial integration of these different modes of transport. For instance, when adding a Ride-Share or Standard Taxi at the start of trips, the pick-up time is automatically determined based on the train departure information, the taxi route to the station, the time of day of travel, and the type of taxi. In most cases, travellers can override the pick-up time to go earlier, with the exception being Ride-Share taxis that have fixed routes. To ensure smooth taxi pick up at destination train stations, taxi drivers have access to real-time train arrival information as well as the mobile phone number of the passenger being picked up. These are just some of the ways that we are fusing together the disparate modes of transport to make mobility for Swedish travellers easier.
At SilverRail, we want to bring such ease of mobility to consumers globally. We also want to leverage emerging mobile and wearable technologies to make all of this even more seamless.
