The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority this week awarded a $15 million transit smart card contract to Cubic Transportation Systems Inc. San Diego-based Cubic will design and install the system that will be compatible with the contactless Easy Card launched in October in Miami-Dade County.
The contract calls for extending the South Florida system across multiple transit agencies serving Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, Cubic says.
Tri-Rail, a commuter-rail service between Palm Beach and Broward counties, will be the first agency to use the Cubic-designed system; Palm Tran and Broward County Transit will join later this year, Cubic says.
Riders will use the cards to pay their transit fares. The transit agency could adapt the card to support nontransit payments, such as at merchants near transportation stations, but that capability is not part of the initial system, a Cubic spokesperson says
It is not known how many cards could be a part of this system.
Cubic says it also will set up the interagency services for processing, settlement and reporting Easy Card transactions among the various transit bodies.
The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority system will use 76 ticket vending machines, 85 ticket readers, six ticket machines for use in offices and 60 handheld ticketing machines.
