About the Alliance : Management : Greg Garback |
||
Greg Garback
Executive Officer of the Department of Finance for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Greg Garback serves as the Executive Officer of the Department of Finance for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA or Metro) in Washington, DC. He has served in this capacity for over seven years coming from twelve years of design and construction management experience on expansion of the Metrorail system in the Washington region.
Among many finance-based responsibilities, Greg was the initial program executive for deploying SmarTrip®, the Authority’s contactless smart card now used as an alternative form of payment for rail and bus system fares and parking lot fees. SmarTrip® was launched in May 1999 with the objective of providing utility and convenience to its customers and now has 1,800,000 cards in the field. Greg’s current focus on SmarTrip® is to strategically expand the multi-application concept for smart cards working with financial institutions to change the payment paradigm for transit and lay the ground work for transitioning from card-issuing organizations to card-accepting merchants. WMATA continues to lead the expansion based on SmarTrip® as the multi-operator, multi-modal fare media for regional the bus and commuter rail systems in the near future.
Greg currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Smart Card Alliance and is the immediate past co-chair of the Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council. Further, Greg performs peer reviews for the transit industry in the U.S. and abroad, assisting agencies in their planning and deployment phases of smart card based systems; serves on several committees within the American Public Transportation Association in roles focused on advanced payment systems and technologies; serves on the federal government Inter-agency Advisory Board (IAB); and, serves as the co-chair of the Electronic Payment Systems task force for the I-95 Corridor Coalition.
