Mass Transit magazine features agency profiles, industry trends, management tips and new product information.
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22 | Mass Transit | MassTransitmag.com | FEBRUARY 2015 OES IT INCREASE RIDER- ship and revenue? Does it improve cus- tomer satisfaction? Does it decrease costs? Tese are the three questions Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) used to weigh the merits of im- plementing a new fare payment system. In 2011 DART developed a Concept of Operations (ConOps) document that examined its infra- structure, with special attention to the fare payment system. Te ConOps provided a thorough look at all of the options available and provided positive insight into contactless smart card-based solu- tions. However, afer examining price quotes for implementing contactless smart cards or cred- it/debit cards, they decided, for the time being, to examine other options. In mobile ticketing, they found a solution that answered "Yes" to all of the questions, and provided other benefts as well. Benefits of Mobile Ticketing Smartphone adoption was rising quickly among all demographics of DART's customer base. In an- alyzing mobile ticketing, they found it provides four benefts: reduced capital costs, fexibility Ticketing on the Go By David Leininger Co-authored by Lawrence Sutton Mobile ticketing ofers many advantages for transit agencies and can be readily deployed on a system-wide basis at a relatively low cost. D TRE RIDERS are introduced to GoPass. DART is also using bar code technology with the mobile devices that its fare enforcement officers carry. for the future, new payment op- tions for customers and an in- crease in the value proposition for customers. Mobile ticketing helps re- duce capital costs for DART by shifing the hardware expense to the customers. What customers call smartphones, they renamed "pocket vending machines," which reduce DART's need and expense for ticket vending machines. Mobile technology is chang- ing rapidly, with new phones out on the market every six months, and near-feld communications (NFC), a form of contactless com- munication, is just now arriving in late 2014. DART's mobile ticket- ing app, GoPass, allows fexibility in how tickets can be validated. Currently, GoPass tickets use animated design elements and interactivity as security elements for visual validation. Once NFC gains broader acceptance in the marketplace, the app will use the NFC technology in customers' phones for additional security. In the meantime many corporations, like Starbucks, are using bar code technology as a secure method to validate payments. DART is also using that technology with the mobile devices that its fare en- forcement ofcers carry. Additionally, mobile ticketing provides DART fexibility in the types of payments it can accept. Besides the major bank cards, in the future DART will be able to accept payment via Pay Pal or any other account-based system that allows real-time validation.