INIT proudly congratulates
THOMAS SCHAICH
Thomas was responsible for delivering INIT‘s first fully
integrated ITS and open payments e-fare system in the
Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Area.
selected for Mass Transit‘s 2017
Top 40 Under 40
INIT Innovations in Transportation, Inc.
www.initusa.com
For more information, visit www.MassTransitmag.com/12078201 For more information, visit www.MassTransitmag.com/10065206
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017 | MassTransitmag.com | Mass Transit | 49
Fact:
The first time
Schaich traveled
to Singapore
he saw how
technology can
make it easy
for everyone
to use transit.
MassTransitmag.
com/12355122
“When it comes to the agencies and getting RFPs out
there, think of the future. I see so many projects where you
have all components interacting with proprietary interfaces
and that makes it so hard to follow trends, to stay stateof
the-art … Create an open system instead of something
where you are stuck to one vendor and you’re not flexible.”
Thomas Schaich
Systems Engineer
INIT Innovations in
Transportation Inc.
project in the United States, TriMet’s
Hop Fastpass on TriMet, C-TRAN and
the Portland Streetcar. With a lot of core
development on INIT’s part for the project,
Schaich oversaw that and served as
the interface between the customer, customer
needs and the development group.
Th e soft launch was in March and it
was rolled out system-wide July 17 of this
year. A smooth, on-time Hop Fastpass
launch is one of his proudest accomplishments,
as there was so much new
technology on their side.
In addition to this project, Schaich
directs work in the Sacramento, California,
Connect Card project, and provides
technical guidance to staff supporting
other projects around the country.
THOMAS SCHAICH’S FIRST JOB
working in public transportation was
manufacturing buses, however, while
fi nishing his master’s program in electrical
engineering in Karlsruhe, Germany
where INIT is headquartered, he had the
opportunity for an internship.
Upon graduation he was hired at
INIT as a systems engineer and quickly
demonstrated high aptitude for working
with people as well as providing strong
engineering and increasingly gained
greater responsibilities.
He had the opportunity to work
for INIT in the United States and was
initially working in the automatic passenger
counting department and was
deploying several projects all over the
United States. He was then the project
engineer for a couple of CAD/AVL projects
— a traditional area for INIT in the
United States — and then the project
lead for INIT’s fi rst fare collection project
in the U.S. It was a small transfer
printer project in Portland, Oregon.
Currently Schaich is the project engineer
for the company’s highest priority