As expected, Cubic Transportation Systems has signed a $394 million contract with the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission to deliver next-generation fare payment technology and operational services to the Clipper smart card system serving the Bay Area.
Clipper currently links 22 regional transit operators and facilitates more than 825,000 journeys per weekday across bus, rail, subway and ferry services. Operated by Cubic since 2009, the program has been popular among transit riders with a 97 percent customer satisfaction rate and will now enable regional commuters to take advantage of the latest in mobile payments technologies.
Cubic will deliver a range of new features including an integrated mobile app that will enable customers to access real-time information, reload their accounts, plan trips and tap their phones as virtual Clipper cards through faregates and on buses in much the same way as mobile payments can be made at retailers. Online fare purchases will be made immediately available for use and an account-based architecture coupled with an open API portal will facilitate creative partnerships and systems extensions.
The new system will be rolled out in phases over a five-year period transitioning into a ten-year full operations term commencing in 2022. Starting in 2019, commuters will begin to see some enhanced speed of reloading, followed by the mobile app, upgraded retail services as well as updated readers on buses, rail lines and ferries. The enhanced readers will be “open payment ready” making way for optional contactless bankcard payments if adopted by the Clipper operators.
“This contract win reinforces Cubic’s position as the industry leader in advanced transportation payment and information systems, enabling Cubic to move more than 40 million passengers a day around the world through our solutions and services,” said Bradley H. Feldmann, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Cubic Corporation.
“Fare payment modernisation will not only help improve the customer experience, but it will sustain a system for years to come that will improve costs and revenue-generating opportunities,” added Matt Cole, president, CTS. “We fully believe in our culture of winning the customer, bringing insights from other successful systems around the world and strengthening the customer’s vision for their ridership. The ability to add third-party partners for shared services, imagined by our NextCity® vision, is now a reality, building a truly integrated mobility system that enables connected journeys.”
Cubic has recently won major fare systems contracts in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Washington D.C. and Brisbane establishing a network of major transit hubs that leverage a common core of technology and solutions. This provides synergy and proven platforms across these transit communities, bridging the transit industry with the ability to connect industries such as electronic payments, mobile payment and marketing, digital content distribution and the latest in data analytics. This technology model opens a variety of new potential partnerships between transit, bike share, ride share, car share, parking and other transportation services falling under the Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) model and addressed by Cubic’s NextCity vision.
Cubic will operate the new system in partnership with its cloud services partner Microsoft. Microsoft will provide a range of financial, analytic and customer management software integrated by Cubic into the overall system.
“Since taking over Clipper from the original contractor nearly ten years ago, we have strived to create a cohesive system linking the multiple partners across the region in a way that delivers not only better payment abilities for riders, but also to foster a data-led service for the operators to tackle congestion and optimise their services,” said Matt Newsome, vice president and general manager, Western Region, CTS.
