Mass Transit - 36

Contactless Fare Collection
what it calls an onboard validator
on all 2,800 buses so that passengers scan their tickets instead of
handing them to the bus operator
or putting then in the box.
For WMATA, Cubic Transportation Systems (Cubic) President Jeff Lowinger explains a successful speedy rollout of SmarTrip
for the iPhone and Apple Watch
centered on building upon what
was already there.
"The more you can use of existing versus creating a different
experience, the quicker you can
roll out," Lowinger said.
Coincidentally, this was also
one of the more challenging tasks:
integrating the older technology
into the newer technology.
"You have to take not only
the existing cards that are there,
but you have to be able to integrate with the user experience with the hardware that's
available today, that interacts
with the watch and the wallet,"
Lowinger explained.
In order to implement this
new offering, WMATA and Cubic
had to upgrade readers, validators, as well as look at one whole
account back office to all be integrated into a solution set. But the
biggest improvement, according
to Lowinger, was the addition of
the mobile app.
"Our traveler app has its own
virtual capability, and it integrates also with the Apple Wallet," Lowinger said. "That was
really kind of the biggest challenge, or biggest improvement,
is how we integrate our traveler
app with the overall experience
with the Apple wallet. There's an
Android Play coming soon, too."

More Than Reducing
Person-To-Person
Contact

Eliminating touchpoints is an obvious benefit of contactless fare
collection solutions. However,
these apps, mobile tickets and
handheld validation devices are
part of the Mobility-as-a-Service

36 |

NJ Transit

(MaaS) journey thanks to their
ability to streamline the customer
experience and provide essential
data to inform decision making.
For instance, St. Louis Metro is using data from the Transit app, as well as the fareboxes
where mobile ticketing transactions are geo-located to help the
agency understand where people
are and are not using fare collection technologies.
"That'll help us market it, and
that will help us better communicate and understand where we
do or don't have good penetration for any given product," Mefford-Miller said.
But perhaps most importantly,
St. Louis Metro's use of the Transit app creates a seamless user experience with users able to plan,
book and pay for their trip all in
one platform, allowing people to
take transit more spontaneously.
"And that's what Mobility-as-a-Service is all about. It's
making it easy and fast to plan,
book and pay for your trip. And
that's where we're headed," Mefford-Miller said.
NJ Transit is also able to collect critical information from
its handheld validation devices
and analyze it to help with capacity, route optimization and
scheduling. The data can show

Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020

NJ TRANSIT plans
to install onboard
validators on all its
buses to provide
a contactless
experience for
riders.

"If we

think about
what people
really want,
[it is that]
they want a
predictable
journey."

JEFF
LOWINGER,
president,
Cubic

how full a particular train is at
certain times, which is the most
crowded car, which is the most
crowded station and the capacity
spread across the train or buses, allowing the agency to adjust
service to prevent crowding, especially important to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Thanks to this collection of data,
NJ Transit recently launched a
"How Full is Your Ride" feature
on its mobile app, empowering
customers to make informed
decisions about when they're
comfortable using the system.
The information can also tell the
agency how conductors are performing, such as how efficiently
they're collecting tickets.
"It gives us a little bit of insight
as to the operations of [fare] collection," Jameel explained.
"All those analytics and decision making make for a better customer experience," Fazal added.
Lowinger echoes similar
thoughts, reiterating riders want
a single app for a more simplified
journey, and they want information to help them make better
decisions on how and when they
will get to their destination.
"If we think about what people really want, [it is that] they
want a predictable journey,"
Lowinger said. "How do we
bring in the right technologies
that it provides rider confidence?
I think the new norm is in front
of us and it's accelerating."
Mefford-Miller agrees the acceleration of rolling out new technology is something that was unprecedented prior to COVID-19.
"We are moving, and I can't
emphasize this enough, we are
moving so much more quickly
than we have in the past. Whether it's technology or policy, we
are really trying to embrace
what we've learned through
COVID-19 and then the nimbleness [in which] we're operating
and carry that forward - even
beyond the effects of the pandemic," Mefford-Miller said.

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