Grab now provides public transport info in its app, trials bus marketplace

Grab is introducing two new features that integrate public transport options into its app, and commuters in Jakarta are among the first in the region to benefit.

The first is the in-app Trip Planner – marketed as Rute in Indonesia – which has been available to Jakartans since earlier this month.

Grab also revealed it’s trialing a new marketplace for buses that will be rolled out in cities across Southeast Asia over the coming months.

Several ride-hailing apps have indicated the importance of multimodal transportation to the future. Uber, for example, has suggested that it would incorporate London Underground and bus data into its service in the UK capital.

However, Xinwei Ngiam, head of marketplace and shared mobility at Grab, told Tech in Asia that she believes it’s the first ride-hailing app internationally to have actually got this far.

“Many [ride-hailing apps] have expressed interest in doing this. We haven’t seen a complete solution globally so far, and especially not in Southeast Asia,” she said.

Trip Planner allows users in Greater Jakarta to plan journeys across multiple modes of transport, including rail, bus, and car and motorbike ride-hailing.

Image credit: Grab

Grab has partnered with public transport providers, including Jakarta’s recently launched MRT, to integrate real-time transport data into Trip Planner. This allows commuters to see how long their journey is likely to take, as well as estimated arrival and departure times.

Ngiam said that she hoped Trip Planner would help to address chronic traffic congestion in Southeast Asian cities – a “big problem that sucks up productivity” in the region. Services like Trip Planner and the bus marketplace are aimed at convincing people to leave their personal cars and motorbikes at home on the one hand, while making public transport more convenient for those that already use it regularly.

“Quality of transport varies a lot, from city to city, and from mode to mode,” said Ngiam. “With our current offerings, and segments we serve […] we are affordable for the middle class, but we are quite aware that a large part of Southeast Asia still gets around every day by mass transit […] Trains and buses, but also big informal sectors like minibuses, minivans, jeepneys, and so on. The trade-off there is they can be unreliable, or could be unsafe.”

She continued, “There’s a lot of data that courses through our platform every day. We can not only use that to make our Grab network more efficient, but make our cities more efficient. That involves knowledge exchange with governments and public agencies.”

In addition to the new MRT, the Grab app will also display live schedules from the region’s commuter rail lines, airport rail link, and Transjakarta rapid bus transit system. Fixed timetables for more than 50 public bus routes will also be included.

As of March 18, more than 500,000 people had used the feature, according to Grab. It will be launched in other Southeast Asian cities over the next few months.