A Concept of Operations for Deploying a Mobile Transit Fare Collection App

To enhance riders’ experiences and to attract new riders, many transit agencies are offering a variety of mobile apps that make trip planning and real-time information easy to access from any place at any time. A growing number of agencies are adding a mobile fare payment and ticketing option to the suite of mobile apps offered to their riders. Not only does this form of ticketing cater to current and potential future riders but also offers the agencies another option for marketing and data collection while increasing system efficiency by reducing the costs of collecting fares. This paper presents a basic concept of operations (ConOps) for use by transit agencies that are considering the addition of a mobile ticketing application to their fare collection system. The ConOps was developed based on lessons learned from five transit agencies (representing five different vendors) in various stages of mobile fare deployment. The ConOps details the customer-facing and fare-inspecting apps, the reporting and backend system, financial processing, roles and responsibilities of agency staff, and estimated timeline and budget, and marketing and training efforts. One of the key findings is that marketing was considered vital to the success of the effort. Additionally, transit agencies are encouraged to investigate the vendor’s references. The ownership of data as well as the ability to make future changes to the app should not be overlooked. Agencies are also advised to conduct sufficient beta testing to work out any glitches before full deployment. If an agency elected to conduct a pilot before full deployment, a suggested pilot evaluation plan is included in the paper.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP000 Public Transportation Group. Alternate title: Concept of Operations for Deploying a Mobile Transit Fare Collection App
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Georggi, Nevine Labib
  • Brakewood, Candace
  • Barbeau, Sean
  • Joslin, Ann
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Fare collection; Mobile applications; Real time information; Ticketing
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Operations and Traffic Management; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01630364
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-05553
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 27 2017 9:35AM