Since the first week after launch, MBTA's The RIDE has maintained 94%+ on-time performance. The RIDE had not consistently reached that number before, not at this scale with over a million trips a year running through a dense urban area. 

Nine months later, the results have held and keep improving. Trip overflow to non-dedicated providers is down 40%. Productivity is up roughly 10%. Trip pooling has moved from the 30–40% range to over 55%. Eligibility determinations now average 9.6 days, with most riders getting a decision within a day of the receipt of a completed application. And approximately 16,800 monthly bookings now flow through riders' phones and laptops instead of the call center.

A fragmented system at massive scale

The RIDE is one of the largest ADA paratransit operations in the country, handling roughly 87,000 to 114,000 boardings per month and well over a million trips per year across Greater Boston’s dense urban environment.  It runs on a coalition of contractors spanning the MBTA, Dedicated and Non-Dedicated Service Providers,  The RIDE Access Center (TRAC), and the Mobility Center.

Before Spare, that scale was being managed across fragmented systems. Eligibility ran on one platform, operations on another, with JotForms and Excel filling in the gaps. Trip-shifting decisions to non-dedicated service providers like Uber, Lyft, and UZURV happened the night before service via spreadsheet uploads, with staff hand-keying the previous day's data back into the system of record each morning.

For riders, self-service was capped at ten favorite addresses. There was no mobile app, no way to see who was picking them up. Customizations to a roughly 20-year-old on-premise system had reached their limit. 

An eight-month build, done together

What made the implementation different wasn’t the timeline. It was how the work got done.  Co-creation and partnership was the operating model, not a marketing term. Spare project managers were embedded on-site at MBTA for months. Drivers and managers used the Spare driver app in successive rounds of road simulations months before launch. 

Every standard operating procedure was documented and mapped to the new system. Weekly meetings with operations, front-line employees, dispatch, the Mobility Center, fleet operators, and other service provider partners kept everyone aligned.

Eight months from contract to launch is fast for an operation this size. It was made possible through structured roadmaps, clear milestones, scoped statements of work for the most complex pieces (data migration, integrations, UAT, vehicle simulations, training), and fast decision-making authority on both sides. A phased rollout, starting with eligibility, and working through to the rider app, meant the team could identify issues before they ever reached riders.

Launch day

The RIDE went live on Spare. The team was in dispatch from 3:00 a.m. The Spare team was on site. Drivers had been trained and tested for months. At TRAC, they ran what became the signature move of the day, when a staff member needed help they raised a flag overhead.  A Spare team member would then run over to assist. It sounds small, but it’s the kind of thing that sticks with you. A literal, physical reminder of what partnership is supposed to mean. 

By lunchtime, things felt close to normal. By the end of the first week, the system had delivered 98%+ on-time performance, a benchmark The RIDE had never reached at this scale.

“This is the best implementation I've ever been a part of. It's also the biggest implementation I've ever been a part of.”   — Chris McKenna, Deputy Director of Paratransit Operations, MBTA

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‍The numbers didn’t just hold, they improved

*Note: on-time performance and eligibility determination time weren't calculated with identical methodologies before and after Spare, and eligibility turnaround also depends on how quickly riders submit complete applications, a factor outside Spare's control. Figures above illustrate directional improvement.*

The Mobility Center completed 1,002 more assessments and 96 more determinations year-over-year, with the same management and physical center, now fully staffed after being understaffed the year prior. Spare's scheduling tools helped the team make fuller use of appointment time, which increased productivity and shortened the timeline to interviews and determinations.

Spare's continuous re-optimization, running every five minutes and pulling in Google Live Traffic) data, has packed the dedicated fleet more densely without sacrificing reliability and as a result, 40% of brokered overflow has come back in-house.

"Before Spare I spent most of my day managing case assignments and appointment scheduling, now I spend my time optimizing our processes" - Janelle Terciak, Manager ADA Operations with MTM

January 2026 brought a major Northeast blizzard that tested the system. The RIDE held high on-time performance throughout. Continuous re-optimization absorbed delays and Spare's Missed Bookings AI caught riders who had canceled outbound legs but forgotten their return trips, preventing a wave of unnecessary no-shows that no one needed.

"This has been the best performance we've seen during a winter storm. OTP about 90% in weather like this is unprecedented" - Mike Hulak, Director of Paratransit Operations MBTA/The RIDE

One platform across the whole operation

The August 2025 launch brought four core Spare products live simultaneously, with rider-facing tools following one month later in September. Since then, adoption has expanded across product breadth.

The platform now processes 2,300–3,000 cases per month across Eligibility and Resolve, alongside ~16,800 monthly self-service bookings.
 

AI as augmentation, not replacement

AI runs across Spare’s platform rather than sitting as a single feature. The Missed Bookings tool catches incomplete trip pairs and missing mobility aid information before dispatch. AI case summaries speed up Eligibility and Resolve reviews. Scout gives operations staff a conversational way to pull ad-hoc reports.. And continuous re-optimization handles routine variability automatically. The framing throughout: AI surfaces information and humans decide.
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Riders in the driver's seat

Before Spare, riders had scattered self-service options, including a booking platform, a vehicle tracking tool, and text-based ETA updates, but no single place to manage their entire trip. The September 2025 launch of the rider app and online portal changed that. Riders can now book to any address in the service area (the old system limited them to ten favorites), track their vehicle in real time, see the driver's name and vehicle number in advance, add location notes, top up funds with auto-pay, and configure notification preferences once. MBTA’s self-serve rider app and web bookings make up nearly 22% of bookings per month - far exceeding the industry standard goal of 8%.

Accessibility was built in, not bolted on. Spare and MBTA worked with WGBH's National Center for Accessible Media on comprehensive testing, and riders using screen readers and various mobility devices were included in pre-launch user testing. Lower-tech options, including the call center, in-person assistance, and alternate ways to add funds,were preserved deliberately. Today, ~16,800 monthly bookings happen through the app or web, freeing call center capacity for the conversations that benefit most from a human.

“Customers now are really expecting that level of features and interactions and user interface — and that wasn't something we were able to offer them.”   — Chris Jurek, Interim Chief of Paratransit Services, MBTA

Lessons for other agencies

• Pick a partner, not just a vendor. Software in this space evolves continuously; evaluate the team alongside the platform.
• Distinguish needs from nice-to-haves. Going into procurement with a wish list can stall implementation. Save the nice-to-haves for later.
• Own your data. MBTA built a standalone data warehouse from day one. This means continuity, audit independence, and options.
• Start change management early. MBTA started stakeholder communications eight months before launch. By go-live, nobody was surprised.
• Be there in-person. At this scale, you can’t fix things as easily over a video call. Same-day issue resolution requires proximity.

Still building together

What the MBTA and Spare teams have built together extends beyond a launch milestone. The habits that made the implementation work — weekly meetings, shared accountability, frontline voices in every decision — didn’t go away after go-live. They’re just how both teams operate now. 

The riders of The RIDE are at the center of every priority and every result. That is what makes this a true partnership: two teams with one shared commitment to delivering the best service for the people who depend on it most.