Via

Founding and early years

Daniel Ramot and Oren Shoval co-founded Via in 2012. The company began as a ridesharing service on New York's Upper East Side before expanding citywide. Via used dynamic routing to group riders more efficiently, matching each rider with passengers heading in the same direction, and directing riders to virtual bus stops to meet their ride. Eventually the consumer business expanded to Washington D.C., Chicago, London, and Amsterdam.

Shift to public transit software

In 2017, the company began offering its software and operational support to municipalities and transit agencies. Partners could buy Via’s software to use as their own white labeled transportation service, or they could have Via handle operations as well, including vehicle fleets, drivers, and on-the-ground management and support staff.

In April 2019, Via worked with King County Metro and Sound Transit to provide last mile transportation to five Sound Transit Link light rail stations in Seattle. In 2023, Via took over operations and software for all of the agency’s on-demand transit services.

In May 2020, Via and Transport for Wales launched fflecsi, a demand-responsive service operating across urban, rural, an suburban areas in Wales.

In October 2020, Via acquired Fleetonomy, an Israeli startup and logistics company. That same year, Via also grew through organic product development by providing software for operating paratransit, and later for fixed-route bus scheduling.

Growth and public listing

After its expansion into a broader transit-tech company, Via continued to grow through acquisitions. In 2021, through its Remix acquisition, Via expanded into city mapping and transportation planning.

In 2023, Via acquired Citymapper, a journey-planning app with more than 50 million users in more than 400 cities. Via and Citymapper have worked with municipal governments and transit agencies to adapt the app to fit local needs, with city branding, disruption messaging, and in the case of the 2024 Paris Olympics, specialized routing for event management.

In August 2025, Via introduced Via Intelligence, its vertical AI platform, which includes real-time dynamic rerouting, predictive runtimes, and ridership modeling. It is used by cities to pre-test changes to physical bus routes.

Demand-responsive transit (DRT)

Demand-responsive transit is a form of shared public transport for groups traveling where vehicles alter their routes each journey based on particular transport demand, without using a fixed route or timetabled journeys.

Microtransit

Microtransit is tech-enabled shared transportation where routing algorithms use real-time, on-the-ground information to group passengers into shared rides. Routes are dynamic; “schedules” shift based on rider demand; and vehicles range in size from vans to shuttles, or buses, depending on what’s needed for the system.

Paratransit

Paratransit is accessible, door-to-door transportation for people with disabilities, typically delivered by vans or minibuses. In the United States, the ADA mandates that paratransit is offered within ¾ miles of any fixed-route bus line or train station. Via’s paratransit software can improve paratransit for both riders and operators by increasing on-time performance, reducing reliance on manual scheduling, and lowering overall cost-per-trip.

Transit consulting

Via has an in-house consulting practice, Via Strategies, that specializes in transit planning for tech-enabled and multimodal transit networks. Via Strategies works with city governments, transit agencies, state departments of transportation, and other transit clients on bus network redesigns, feasibility studies, and microtransit planning.