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January 2007 • Volume 12 Number 1
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Member Profile: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
This month, Smart Card Talk spoke with Christopher (Chris) C. Cipperly, Assistant Treasurer of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). Chris has spent the last 32 years in various areas of investment and cash management, encompassing responsibilities from check writing, commodity hedge execution, day-to-day portfolio management, and municipal bond financing. During the last decade, Authority cash management has been focusing more on technology solutions to make operations more efficient. As a result, a great deal of Chris's time over the last several years has involved electronic payments. He managed the first privatization of any WMATA revenue operations function by contracting out customer service support for SmarTrip®7 to ACS. Chris participated in the conversion of WMATA parking to SmarTrip® only payment facilities. He has worked closely with the installation and testing of the new WMATA bus fareboxes and has been involved with the planning and coordination of the Regional SmarTrip7 project. Chris has also had the pleasure of working and contributing as a member of the Transportation Council of the Smart Card Alliance over the last several years. Chris has a Bachelor of Economics from Clemson University, 1971, and is Past President of the Government Financial Officers Association of the Washington Metropolitan Area. 1. What is WMATA's main business? The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) operates the second largest rail transit system and the fifth largest bus network in the United States. Safe, clean and reliable, “America’s Transit System” transports more than a third of the federal government to work and millions of tourists to the landmarks in the Nation’s Capital. The Authority was created in 1967 by an Interstate Compact to plan, develop, build, finance and operate a balanced regional transportation system in the National Capital area. Construction of the Metrorail system began in 1969. Four area bus systems were acquired in 1973. The first phase of Metrorail began operation in 1976. The final leg of the original 103-mile rail network was completed in early 2001. Today, there are 86 Metro stations in service within a 106.3 mile network. Metrorail and Metrobus serve a population of 3.5 million within a 1,500 square-mile area. The transit zone consists of the District of Columbia, the suburban Maryland counties of Montgomery and Prince George’s and the Northern Virginia counties of Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun and the cities of Alexandria, Fairfax and Falls Church. Overall, 42 percent of those working in the center core—Washington and parts of Arlington County—use mass transit. 2. What role does smart card technology play in supporting WMATA's business? WMATA was the first transit authority to push aggressively for the use of smart cards in its systems. WMATA has been using the SmarTrip card for Metrorail and parking since May 1999. The Metrobus system became fully SmarTrip capable in August 2004, and a series of contracts are in place between the system provider and multiple independent transit agencies throughout the State of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia to expand SmarTrip acceptance throughout the region. In 2007, SmarTrip will be expanded to regional operators in Washington, DC, and then expanded to include transit systems in Baltimore, MD. To date, WMATA has issued over 2 million contactless cards. 60% of our rail passengers, 20% of our bus passengers, and 100% of our parking lot users depend on SmarTrip for their daily transit payments. 3. What trends do you see developing in the market that WMATA hopes to capitalize on? Contactless cards are becoming more and more prevalent in the U.S. among public transit providers and the financial industry has now begun a major push into the market. Being on the forefront of the deployment wave of contactless cards for transit, WMATA is looking at new technologies and trends -- for example, contactless payment cards and NFC-enabled devices supporting convergence between vertical markets. Our primary goal is to make riding public transit more attractive for our customers. 4. What obstacles to growth do you see that must be overcome to capitalize on these opportunities? One of the biggest challenges facing the industry right now is proprietary closed payment systems. Installed systems face compatibility issues reading the cards of others and generally lack any backend capacity to handle foreign cards. Proprietary systems, by their nature, restrict growth and expansion. This inhibits transit agencies' desires to meet customer demand for flexibility in using multiple payment types and form factors. 5. What do you see are the key factors driving smart card technology in the transit market? Consumers demand speed, convenience and reliability. Contactless cards have proven to be a fast, durable and secure form of fare media. Public transit operators are pushing hard to provide improved customer service and more seamless transfers between various modes of travel to make riding transit easy and attractive for the customer. 6. How do you see your involvement in the Alliance and Transportation Council helping WMATA become successful? It is important for all market participants to understand issues that each face in the use and adoption of contactless technology. The Transportation Council provides a forum for free exchange of ideas, a place to keep abreast of smart card projects in the transportation sector, and a place to talk with other key participants to move implementations forward. 7. In your role as Transportation Council Vice Chair, what do you see are primary goals for the Council for the next year? During the first two years of the Transportation Council, we have been able collaborate as a group to produce several white papers which hopefully have advanced the dialog about smart cards in transportation. Certainly smart card adoption has been growing in the transit space. We need to continue to work toward ways to open the environment, expand adoption, find mutually beneficial solutions, and find better ways to partner.
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