Optibus announced its acquisition of Trillium, a SaaS provider helping transit operators and agencies keep riders informed.

Trillium will become Optibus’ Global Center for Data Excellence and operate as an Optibus subsidiary, integrating its expertise in public transportation data feeds and team of 25 data experts into Optibus, strengthening Optibus’ mass transportation optimization capabilities.

Trillium’s public transportation data, including General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), improves passenger communication, allowing the industry to publish schedule and real-time service data in a format consumable by apps including Google Maps and Apple Maps.

In 14 years of operation, Trillium has helped over 350 U.S. transit agencies and operators, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Caltrain, Anaheim Resort Transportation, San Francisco Bay Ferry, Sonoma County Transit, DC Streetcar, and the Departments of Transportation (DoTs) in Massachusetts, Oregon, Colorado, and other US states, to improve passenger experience and communication.

“This new partnership between Trillium and Optibus, two innovative and customer-focused technology companies, is exciting for the transit industry. As a current Optibus client and long-time Trillium client, I’m convinced this combination will allow Marin Transit and other Optibus scheduling clients a more sophisticated and robust set of tools to manage and publish GTFS data for riders,” said Robert Betts, director of Operations and Planning, Marin Transit.

The acquisition diversifies Optibus’ service offering to include Trillium’s data-centric products and services, including GTFS Manager, transit alerts, interactive maps, and transit websites.

Optibus said it will begin to take a consultative approach to challenges that cannot be solved by software alone, but also need data aggregation and analysis.

“Our acquisition of Trillium accelerates Optibus towards its vision of an all-encompassing, end-to-end software platform for daily transportation operations. We are committed to realizing that vision through the development of cutting-edge technology alongside organic business developments and corporate development initiatives that enable us to work with industry leaders like Trillium,” said Amos Haggiag, CEO/co-founder of Optibus.