MBTA: Automated Fare Collection Project On Time (For 2020)

BOSTON, MA — Remember when the MBTA said it was going to have a new automated fare collection system in part to speed up the process and stop the sometimes maddening problem of folks hopping on without paying during rush hour? Well, it's (ahem) on track for 2020.

The project which will put fare readers at all doors on Green Line trains and buses first is expected to replace the existing CharlieCard systems and do away with cash altogether using smart phones and bank cards.

"With automatic fare collections we will be able to have customers boarding at more than one location on vehicles, we will reduce the congestion which occurs when people pay with cash, and we will get riders on and off buses and trains much quicker. All of that adds up to more efficient operations and more seamless travel for our customers," said MBTA Chief Administrative Officer Brian Shortsleeve in 2016. Just how seamless? Last year the MBTA estimated it would help operations get some 10 percent quicker.

This comes on the heals of an announcement that the Transit Signal Priority pilot giving the trains traffic priority went so well, the MBTA is expanding it to include broader corridors of Beacon Street in Brookline, Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Huntington Avenue in Boston, and Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge.

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But back to that automated fare collection: Next year the MBTA will choose the team who will be behind the details. David Block-Schachter, the chief technology officer at the MBTA, said the team - part of a public/ private partnership - wouldn't get paid until the project was up and running, according to Commonwealth Magazine.

“What we’re essentially saying is that you [the vendor] are going to do all the work and your money is going to be on the hook until the system is actually commissioned,” he said, Commonwealth reported.

Last year the MBTA said fewer than 4 percent of customers actually used cash and that the cost benefits of going cashless were worth it. In 2016 some 91 percent of riders used a station or stop with a vending machine each day. The MBTA hoped to expand that network and enable mobile payment.

The MBTA's new fare card would also enable "one more trip" overdraft protection that allows users with insufficient fare to board vehicles when needed.

Read the full Commonwealth Magazine article here.

Read last year's press release on the project here: MBTA Issues RFQ for Automated Fare Collection System

And a fancy presentation from last October with cool pictures.

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Photo by Jenna Fisher/Patch