The Smart Card Alliance’s transportation council this year plans to continue its focus in support of open-loop contactless transit payment card systems as more cities realize the potential benefits over closed-loop systems, according to an organization executive.
“Transit [agencies] are realizing they don’t see any benefits being in the payments business and prefer the transit business,” Randy Vanderhoof, alliance executive director, tells PaymentsSource. “[The agencies] would like to leverage existing payment rails” to introduce an open-loop scheme.
The council on March 24 announced its agenda for the coming year and its officers who will help support it.
Craig Roberts, the Utah Transit Authority’s manager for technology program development, is the council’s chair. Gerald Kane, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s manager of new payment technologies, is the vice chair of transit along with Mike Nash, who works in Affiliated Computer Services Inc.’s transit technology division.
Peter Burrows, Parkeon Inc.’s vice president of product development, is the vice chair of parking. Parkeon provides parking technology such as meters that accept card payments.
The council the past few years has focused more on supporting “the application” of open-fare systems, as several cities continue to experiment and evaluate switching from a closed-loop system, Vanderhoof says.
Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., are among several cities seeking to adopt open-fare transit systems.
The Chicago Transit Authority is in the midst of the second phase of launching an open-loop electronic fare-collection system (
Philadelphia is conducting a test of an open transit payment card system along a 14-mile commuter rail line near the city (
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is in the process of accepting proposals from tech companies to replace its closed-loop system.
Three New York transit agencies last year tested an open-loop contactless system that used MasterCard Worldwide technology (
“We’re anxiously supporting the transit operators around the country who are looking for additional information to help build business plans and business models,” Vanderhoof says.
The alliance conducted a March 27 workshop with the American Public Transportation Association that included representatives from 42 U.S. transit operators. “Transit operators want to understand what they would need to do in order to start accepting mobile devices or contactless cards issued by banks,” Vanderhoof says.
Transit systems should evaluate their short- and long-term needs regarding new fare-collection systems and “then match those needs to what is currently available in the market,” he adds.
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