Eight Awesome Up and Coming Companies In Transportation

As an event management professional, part of your job is to make sure attendees can make it safely to and from your events. Of course, sometimes that’s easier said than done – everything from chaotic rental services to confusing infrastructure to poorly-designed transit systems stands in your way. Thankfully, there’s a new camp of startup that’s been popping up of late; a breed of business specifically dedicated to getting people where they need to go as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible.

Today, we’re going to go over a few of the most interesting, most popular, and most promising. Recommend a few of these to your guests, and they’ll save both time and money – and be that much happier at your events for it.

Silvercar

As anyone who’s ever had to rent a car at the airport can attest, it’s a process that sort of makes you want to pull your hair out.  Texas-based Silver Car was founded precisely so that people could avoid having to deal with that level of frustration. Their app is at once both remarkably simple and incredibly brilliant – provided you’re in one of their supported locations, you can use it to effortlessly reserve and rent a silver Audi A4.

Yeah, that’s the only type of car they rent – it helps cut down on confusion, lets customers skip the car selection process, and gives Silvercar a recognizable brand, to boot.

Silvercar is available on Android and iOS.

Relay Rides

Another rental service, Relay Rides is unique in that it not only offers transportation, but solves the problem of long-term car storage for people traveling abroad. A traveler simply drops their car off at one of Relay Rides’ 300 airport lots, at which point the vehicle is stored there free of charge. It can then be rented out to people in need of transportation; the owner of the car receives a free car wash and a payment rate of $.10 per mile.

In other words, it lets you get paid to store your car while you travel.

HopStop

Standard GPS doesn’t often give the user point-to-point directions, nor does it always account for different modes of travel. Hopstop, however, does. This app offers walking, biking, transit, and taxi directions in more than 300 cities worldwide, with maps that show nearby subways, bus stops, bars, hotels, and restaurants.

It even includes estimated taxi times, displays potential delays, and identifies wheelchair-friendly routes. Oh, and it tells you how many calories your trip will burn, as well.

Hailo

Hailo joins Lyft and Uber as one of the many up-and-coming taxi apps on the market. It makes hailing a cab one of the simplest processes imaginable – simply pull out your phone, use the app to flag down a nearby taxi, and pay for it before the driver even arrives based on your destination. Quick, easy, and painless.

Currently, Hailo is available in most major cities around the world, and has offered transportation to more than 100 million individuals.

Hailo is available on Android and iOS.

Loup

Most taxi services operate strictly on a customer-by-customer basis. While this can be fairly convenient, it also tends to lead to some rather significant backlog during peak hours. Loup seeks to solve that problem in a very interesting fashion – by fusing a taxi service with public transit.

Based in San Francisco, the startup allows passengers to book a car through a mobile app. Where it differs from competitors like Uber, however, is in the fact that Loup cars all run on scheduled, predetermined routes. An interesting approach – and one that so far seems to be working quite well.

Loup is an iOS exclusive.

Transit App

Founded in 2013, the company behind Transit App seeks to solve one of the biggest problems with big city life – confusing, archaic bus and train scheduling systems that make it difficult for residents to figure out where they’re going (and when they’ll get there). The app itself is pretty much exactly what you’d expect; an interactive scheduling system that displays all nearby transportation options, with the ability to select an alternative means of transport in the even that a bus was missed or is running late.

Transit App is available on iOS and Android.

Just Park

Plenty of transportation apps and startups are all about helping people get to their destination; providing them with schedules, routes, and vehicles. Very few, however, take into account what happens when the user actually arrives. I’m talking about parking – something which is downright nightmarish in larger cities, especially as far as large conventions or trade shows are concerned.

Just Park exists to solve that problem, allowing users to book parking spaces all across the UK.

It’s far from the only app of its type, of course. Rover’s another promising example; an app that allows people to rent out their driveways as parking spots. There’s also Park ‘n Find, which functions in a very similar fashion to Just Park, but can be used in the States.

Ride

Last, but certainly not least, there’s Ride, an awesome carpooling startup that was recently backed by Uber. Although it’s designed primarily for employees carpooling to work, there’s no reason it couldn’t work just as well for groups of people attending the same event, simplifying the commute between venue and hotel while saving on both gas and cash for attendees.