San Diego Nears End of Conversion to Contactless Monthly Transit Cards

A year-long conversion of the old fare-collection systems used by monthly-ticket customers of multiple transit agencies in San Diego County, Calif., to a unified system based on contactless cards is nearing completion, a local official tells Digital Transactions News. The new system, from San Diego-based Cubic Transportation Systems Inc., will be one of the nation's largest contactless card operations for transit when completed and illustrates the hurdles agencies must surmount to bring electronic payment technology to transit, where cash and tokens reigned supreme for more than a century. About 74% of San Diego County's 90,000 monthly transit-pass users have converted to the new tap-and-go Compass Card since the card debuted last May, according to James Dreisbach-Towle, program manager for the San Diego Association of Governments (Sandag). He expects the conversion to hit the 98%-99% mark in May, a year after rollout began. Sandag is San Diego's regional planning agency that oversees two transportation authorities and seven operating entities in the big county. Combined, the transit systems have a daily ridership of 290,000. The contactless card operation, whose cost Dreisbach-Towle estimates at $5 million to $6 million, is just one part of a $40 million modernization of the county's fare systems, planning for which began back in 1999. The old systems were based on paper single-fare tickets and monthly passes, and tokens. The agency began testing the Cubic fare system in the spring of 2008. At that time, officials encountered a few glitches in the operating software, but Dreisbach-Towle attributes that mostly to the difficulties in bringing so many different transit operations under one fare-payments roof. San Diego's transit options include numerous bus lines, the Coaster commuter-rail line and the famous San Diego Trolley that runs from the middle of of San Diego down to the Mexican border. “We have a very complex fare system,” he says, adding that the rollout itself has been mostly problem-free. “I would say since May of '09 things have been pretty smooth,” says Dreisbach-Towle. The new Compass Card can be used at 70 transit stations and 800 buses. Customers can reload them online, through Sandag's call center, at stations, and in about 60 Vons supermarkets and five so-called transit stores. Customers can pay with cash when loading in person, or they can charge electronic passes to a credit card or checking account. While many transit systems that have implemented contactless cards have stored-value features on their cards, the San Diego operation uses what its back-office system recognizes as electronic two-week-plus or monthly passes. “Really what you're doing now is loading a product; you're loading that period pass,” says Dreisbach-Towle. He expects full stored-value functionality to be added later this year. Besides stored value, other planned enhancements include electronic day passes. About 70% of area transit riders use monthly or multiweek passes. Longer term, Sandag is considering making Compass Cards usable at parking lots and in the carpool highway toll lanes it oversees in the county. Sandag implemented the new transit fare system less for cutting operational costs from reduced cash handling and more for unifying the disparate fare systems “to make travel seamless between all the transit operators,” says Dreisbach-Towle. Another major goal was to gain the ability to do better planning by quickly gathering more and better data about who rides public transit, and when, he adds. A spokesperson for Cubic Transportation Systems was unavailable for comment. Cubic has developed fare-collection systems in 40 major markets around the world, including New York/New Jersey, Washington D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco in the U.S. Last month, the company won a $15 million contract to provide a new smart card ticketing and revenue-management system for the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which will be interoperable with Miami-Dade County's new Easy Card system. When complete, the system will enable Floridians to use one fare card for travel on local Miami-area transit and on the Tri-Rail system that serves Miami and Palm Beach and Broward counties to the north.