Santiago de Chile is the thousandth city to choose Optibus to manage the public transport system

Santiago, Chile, is the 1,000th city in the world to choose Optibus, the cloud-native planning, scheduling, rostering and operations platform for mass transit, to optimize and power its public transportation system.

This milestone means the number of cities using Optibus to improve transportation efficiency has more than doubled in six months since Park City, Utah, became the 500th city, and marks Optibus’ entry into Chile, one of several new markets the company has expanded into over the past twelve months.

Optibus will partner in Santiago with Metbus, the country’s largest public transport operator. Metbus operates 25% of Santiago’s public transportation system, with 11.6 million passengers each month, and has the largest distribution of electric vehicles (EVs) in the Americas, with 436 electric buses out of a total fleet of 1,542 vehicles. Although it has already built and implemented a comprehensive charging management system, Metbus needed a more advanced, centralized system that would optimize its large EV fleet and help the company grow.

Optibus’ early results in Santiago demonstrated to Metbus how to easily integrate diesel and electric vehicles on the same or different routes, demonstrating significant time and cost savings.

«There is no other optimization system in the world like Optibus», said Diego Fuentes, head of planning and development at Metbus, who added: «Its innovative way of solving the transportation problem, using machine learning and an intuitive user interface, makes the software a powerful and easy-to-use tool for our daily planning and scheduling and EV operations. This capability is critical to combating climate change and attracting more people to public transportation. We are excited to use this all-in-one, easy-to-use platform, adding Santiago to the list of a thousand cities working with Optibus to improve public transportation».

«Thousand Cities is an incredible milestone. It reflects the global push to make public transportation the preferred mode of mobility and the need to increase operational efficiency, reduce costs and improve service quality,” said Amos Haggiag, CEO and co-founder of Optibus, «All of this further confirms that digitization and innovation are essential to keep up with the evolving needs of bus drivers and passengers and to provide transportation services to the people and places that need them most», he added.