Tag: news
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New York’s $1.1 Billion Fare Gate Plan Is Really a Vendor Scorecard
Governor Hochul and the MTA announced on October 7 that the first 20 subway stations fitted with new fare gates saw fare evasion drop by an average of 35% over roughly the past year. At two stations, Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn and Nostrand Avenue, the drop was over 70%. That’s the headline number, and it’s a…
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Metrobus Goes Systemwide, Metrolink Bets on the World Cup, and Connecticut Hits a Procurement Wall
Three transit payment stories crossed my feed this year that are worth reading together rather than separately, because each one is solving a completely different version of the same problem: how do you get contactless fare payment live without breaking what’s already running. WMATA is the legacy-retrofit case. Metrorail switched on open-loop tap payment in…
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Fare Capping Is Easy to Announce and Hard to Build
Toronto’s TTC turned on fare capping September 1. So did MTA’s OMNY (a rolling 7-day cap) and St. Louis Metro Transit’s brand-new Masabi ABT platform. Three agencies, three different back-end architectures hiding behind the same simple promise.
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The Real Risk in TransLink’s $507 Million Fare RFP Isn’t the Price Tag
TransLink’s Compass RFP has grown from $220 million to $507 million before a vendor is even picked. A look at what that number actually means, and what Boston’s MBTA AFC 2.0 program can teach about structuring the contract that comes next.
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Account-Based Ticketing (ABT): A Paradigm Shift for Urban Mobility
In an era dominated by convenience, flexibility, and digital-first expectations, public transportation systems across the United States are under increasing pressure to modernize. One of the most transformative innovations driving this change is Account-Based Ticketing (ABT). Unlike traditional fare systems that rely on physical tickets or cards to store value, ABT decouples fare media from…
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Open-Loop vs. Closed-Loop Transit Systems: A Strategic Guide
As urban populations grow and mobility demands evolve, city planners, transit agencies, and project management offices (PMOs) face a critical decision in modernizing public transportation systems: Should you implement an open-loop or closed-loop fare payment system? This choice is not merely technical but a strategic one that impacts ridership experience, operational efficiency, equity, and long-term…