Launched in 2013, Bandwagon is based at the Urban Future Lab, an innovative cleantech incubator in downtown Brooklyn powered by an unprecedented partnership between NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering and The City and State of New York. Bandwagon has received accolades from the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, New York City's BigApps, Ultralight Startup’s Future Energy Competition, Verizon, and others. Bandwagon’s mission is to make transportation more efficient and affordable by making use of all the networks that bind our cities and neighborhoods together — networks of people, infrastructure, and information. Bandwagon unites our need for mobility, the necessity of saving money, and a responsibility to use resources efficiently.
Bandwagon is resolving acute congestion issues for some of the world’s most overtaxed infrastructure. Airports, transportation hubs, and major convention centers repeatedly experience the same critical congestion issues: they attract more passengers than they have available taxis to move those passengers. To solve this problem, these customers pay Bandwagon to facilitate ridesharing, which dramatically improves their customers’ experience: reducing wait times, congestion, pollution, and accessibility costs.
Bandwagon's Hop Lanes and mobile app helped the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show significantly reduce curb crunch and congestion on the taxi lines, providing a novel opportunity to visibly improve the experience for visitors to the world's largest technology show. Bandwagon saved attendees over $18,000 and half a ton of carbon dioxide.
The OpenXC platform would enable Bandwagon to further monitor and minimize overall fuel consumption and carbon emissions of vehicles in its operating fleet—fore-fronting this information for our energy conscious customers.
One of the features the team is proudest about is Bandwagon’s social integration. By connecting to users’ social networks, Bandwagon is able to use new media to foster efficient and social behavioral change that results in real energy consumption and congestion reductions.
Bandwagon has recently partnered with United Airlines to make sharing taxis and splitting fares to and from Newark Airport easier than ever. United Airlines customers can save up to 60% on rides by sharing with Bandwagon. Shared rides reduce costs, congestion, and pollution, and give Newark Airport’s swelling taxi fleet an eco-efficient upgrade.
Bandwagon also won the 2013 Verizon Powerful Answers Award in the sustainability category. Bandwagon is offering “sustainable, accessible mobility” with a goal to do “more with less” to improve upon current infrastructure issues.
Finally, Bandwagon was awarded a $75,000 grant by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). This grant was given to improve traffic management. Bandwagon has worked with researchers at Columbia University, New York University and several New York City agencies to develop an open database management system that pools sources of electronic information on traffic flow in order to promote traffic data accessibility, improve traffic management, increase traffic efficiency and reduce fuel use due to traffic delays.
New For Shanghai, Bandwagon, has developed a mobile web application and hub-view that quickly enables commuters at crowded transportation hubs like airports to see passengers and departing rides in their vicinity. The mobile web application is significantly lighter weight and easier to deploy than our native iPhone and Android applications. It also reduces the need for our physical hardware solutions — which will enable Shanghai residents to more efficiently and rapidly deploy our sharing networks at their most crowded transportation centers.
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