FARE COLLECTION
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Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | NOVEMBER 2014
For more information, visit www.MassTransitmag.com/10065851
Vanderhoof said the banking
industry uses diferent technol-
ogy than that of fare media used
by transit operators, so the switch
to an open fare payment system
means upgrades to a lot of equip-
ment. Te agency has to put in
card readers capable of reading
all diferent credit cards and deb-
it cards and mobile devices. Sup-
porting these devices also means
back-end upgrades to the system
and an investment in turnstiles,
vending machines, validators and
even parking facilities to make
sure it's all compatible with the
new fare payment system.
"A new development is that
this upgrade is very expensive,
but since we've seen major tran-
sit agencies like Chicago, Phila-
delphia, Washington, D.C., L.A.
and others have gone through
the implementation phase and
are now in operations with that
technology, the cost of that tech-
nology is dropping signifcantly,"
Vanderhoof said.
Vanderhoof said new tech-
nology is addressing issues with
transaction speeds as well. Te
transportation industry requires
fare data be processed extremely
fast, but changes in improvements
in the chip design of payment
cards in recent years is now ad-
dressing this issue.
With payment data thef re-
ported on large scales in the past
year from large North American
retailers, some riders and agencies
may be concerned with security
on an open fare payment system.
Vanderhoof said there aren't any
issues with security when moving
to open fare payment.
"Consumers have a lot of pro-
tection when it comes to securi-
ty when using bank cards. More
protection than they may have in
the fare media provided by most
transit agencies, so frst of all, the
payment systems do a really good
job of making payment technology
MOBILE TICKETING
can offer new
layers of data to
transit agencies
to track rider
habits that
traditional fare
media can't.
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