A Fredericton startup company is looking at about 250 cities in the U.S. and Canada with populations of less than 150,000 as the target market for its product to improve transit systems.

Alex Kall, CEO of ReadyPass, admits there are other firms creating technology to improve transit systems. But he said most target large cities with large budgets.

What ReadyPass is planning to do is to target smaller cities, which he said have different needs and spending capacity.

 “Once you get out of the large metropolises, a lot of the smaller cities don’t have the same access to these resources,” Kall said in a recent interview.

“Our technology could handle the needs of big cities, but we’re developing hardware that smaller cities could adapt.”

ReadyPass got its start about a year ago when developers Amy Colford and Taeler Dixon realized the difficulty they were having in Fredericton knowing when a bus was coming. They contacted the local transit department and proposed a digital toolkit to address the problem. The transit agency loved the idea and they began to work on it.

Kall, who had just taken a startup called Pilotalk through the University of New Brunswick’s Summer Institute, soon joined the company as CEO.

Over the past year, the team has developed a system of hardware and software that helps transit passengers and the agency itself in three ways.

First, there’s an app for Android and iOS that shows bus routes and can tell passengers where the next bus is and how long it will be until it arrives. Eventually, Kall said, this feature will include an electronic bus pass so the passenger doesn’t have to go to a physical location to buy a pass.

Second, ReadyPass installs a suite of sensors on each bus allowing the transit department to monitor such data as the location and speed of the buses, and the number of passengers getting on and off at each stop.

Finally, it offers the transit department a dashboard to monitor and chart all the data that’s been collected. That helps to design routes and schedules that meet optimum demand.

Kall said the data can also be used by other municipal departments. For example, the on-bus sensors can measure road conditions, which can be of use to the works departments.

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Kall and the team is now working with Fredericton to further develop the product, and expects to continue this work for several months.

It’s also working or having discussions with other municipalities in the region, including Cape Breton and Saint John. And it’s in talks with a Fredericton bus company.

Of course, ReadyPass hopes to break out of the Maritimes though this will be a slow process.

Having gone through Propel ICT’s Launch program this spring, the company is now trying to raise $100,000 to finance its growth.

“The sales cycle is fairly long when you’re talking about selling to cities,” Kall said. “But there’s a lot of buzz about transit adding technology to it’s a good time to be talking to small communities.”