Transit has just raised $17.5 million to accelerate its platform for millions of city dwellers looking to find the best way from atob without their own car.
The lead investor for this Series B investment is Alliance Ventures, a joint investment arm of RenaultNissanMitsubishi. Christian Noske from the Alliance will be joining Transit’s board. Joining the Alliance are InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund.
Participants also include two of Transit’s past investors, Accel and Real Ventures.
This latest investment is an endorsement of the vision Transit has been pursuing since it was founded in 2012: to bring urban mobility services together in a single, elegant, integrated experience. In the coming years, Transit will continue to grow its team, deepening its integrations and connections between multiple modes in the more than 175 cities it serves worldwide.
In addition to providing realtime transit information and trip planning, Transit offers the ability to discover and pay for a range of new mobility options. Transit users can request and pay for an Uber trip directly in the app, book carsharing vehicles from multiple providers, and purchase bikeshare passes and unlock bikes with 10 North American bikeshare systems. To date, Transit users have unlocked more than than 2.5 million bikeshare rides.
Transit is also embracing the rapidly evolving mobility ecosystem: it was the first navigation app to aggregate realtime information from the competing dockless bikeshare and scooter operators on the streets of cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, DC, making it easy for users to find the closest option. Transit continues to close deals with mobility operators to improve the experience for users.
Transit has partnered with dozens of transit agencies to become their official or endorsed multimodal app. By working closely with public transportation operators, Transit can save agencies the significant costs and staff time required to develop and maintain their own app, while offering quality realtime information and multimodal connections to more people. Agency partners include Boston’s MBTA, Baltimore’s MDOT MTA, Silicon Valley’s VTA, Tampa Bay’s PSTA, and Montreal’s STM.
“New modes of mobility are entering the market at record speeds,” said Sam Vermette, chief executive of Transit. “It took decades for carsharing to catch on. Now, ebikes and scooters are being rolled out in weeks. This is an exciting time, as Transit helps people navigate their new mobility options.”
“We are pleased to make a strategic investment in Transit, the leading urban mobility navigation startup in North America,” said François Dossa, Alliance Global vice president, Ventures and Open innovation. “Our partnership, which will advance Transit’s efforts to make mobility in cities seamless and accessible in cities, fits with the Alliance 2022 strategy to become a leader in robovehicle ridehailing mobility services and a provider of vehicles for public transit use and carsharing.”
