U.S. Transit Agency Eliminates Cash on Board Buses; One of Few Cashless Agencies Nationwide
Faced with the choice of replacing aging fareboxes on its bus fleet or stopping cash acceptance altogether on board the vehicles, a small regional U.S. transit agency in Colorado chose the latter–even though it had collected 40% of its fares in the fareboxes only a month earlier.
It made Core Transit, which serves several small communities located two hours outside of Denver, one of the few transit agencies in the U.S. to have gone cashless on board its public transit vehicles.
Special Report: Masabi and Cubic Seek to Sign Up Transit Agencies in North America with Group Contracts; In-Depth Look at NEORide Deal
The largest group fare contract of its kind in the U.S. will become at least a little bit bigger in 2025, when the NEORide council of governments says it will add five to six more transit agencies to the 15 agencies now live with its EZfare ticketing service across four states, Mobility Payments has learned.
NEORide’s ticketing vendor, UK-based Masabi, and its chief rival for software-as-a-service ticketing projects in North America, Cubic Transportation Systems and its Umo platform, are promoting the idea of regional fare projects.
To be sure, regional and nationwide fare-system procurements have been a growing trend for years globally, including those in Ireland, New Zealand and the Netherlands. These are mainly system integrator-led projects, however. In car-dominant North America, the early regional projects are using SaaS platforms and are targeting smaller transit agencies.
U.S. Agency Pulls Back from Going Cashless, Citing Some Rider Complaints
A transit agency in Knoxville, Tenn., yesterday introduced account-based ticketing, fare capping and new reloadable contactless cards, all geared–at least in part–to enable the agency to eliminate cash acceptance on board its buses.
It would have made Knoxville Area Transit, or KAT, one of the few agencies in the U.S. to rid its vehicles of cash. But KAT, which had proposed only last month to end cash acceptance starting Dec. 2, quickly reversed course after receiving pushback from some riders.
Las Vegas Agency Wagers Open Loop will Pay Off, Despite High Interchange and Other Transaction Fees
The Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada collects cash for well over half the rides it delivers on its 400 buses that ply the Las Vegas Strip and other parts of its service area of more than two million people.
RTC knows it will never eliminate cash on board its fleet, with many of its more than 50 million annual
Multiple Vendors Disqualified in Bidding to Supply Open-Loop Technology for California’s ‘Mobility Marketplace’
A number of well-known industry vendors that bid on two much-anticipated contracts from the state of California to the supply open-loop payments technology to transit agencies statewide were disqualified last month, mostly for failing to meet strict administrative requirements, documents reveal.
Collaboration with Uber and Lyft: Two Years on, Transactions Remain Low; Suspicions Run High over Data Sharing
When the Regional Transportation District of Denver began enabling Uber to sell its bus and train tickets in May 2019-in the first integration of its kind in the world-it was seen as a rare example of a public transit agency and a private ride-sharing company putting competition aside and working together.
Ohio Transit Agency Expects Significant Revenue Loss as It Builds Equity with Fare Capping
The Central Ohio Transit Authority, or COTA, officially launched its new digital-payments service Monday, including a fare-capping feature that the agency estimates will cost it $1.8 million per year in lost fare revenue, the agency confirmed to Mobility Payments.
U.S. Transit Agency Eliminates Cash Acceptance on Board Its Vehicles as Planned
In the run-up to the elimination of cash fares on board its fixed-route buses and trolleybuses today, the Greater Dayton RTA had reduced cash payments to less than 10% of all trips, while 92% of the trips were paid for with digital payments–either contactless closed-loop cards or mobile ticketing, the agency told Mobility Payments.
U.S. Transit Agency Introduces Scanning of Mobile Tickets, but Overall Move to Electronic Payments Progressing Slowly
Most mid-tier transit agencies in the U.S., like the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority, or SORTA, in Cincinnati, still have to deal with high usage of cash and paper tickets on board their buses and other transit vehicles, even as the continuing pandemic increases pressure on them to move to more electronic forms of fare payments.
Transit Agency to Enable Cash Loading, Fare Capping with Mobile Ticketing
Another public transit agency plans to enable customers to load value to their mobile accounts at retail locations and to buy tickets through both a local app and the trip-planning Transit app.