	About Smart Cards : Applications : Transportation

Transportation Applications

Smart cards are used worldwide in transportation applications, with millions of smart cards in use for both transit fare payment and parking fee payment.

Smart Card Alliance Transportation Reports
Smart Cards and Transit
Smart Cards and Parking
Other Transportation Resources

Smart Card Alliance Transportation Reports

Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council
Planning for New Fare Payment and Collection Systems: Cost Considerations and Procurement Guidelines This white paper was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council to present a conventional approach for planning, conducting a cost analysis, and procuring a new fare payment system or upgrading an existing system. Additionally, a cost model is presented that allows the user to input an agency’s current fare payment and fare collection costs and compare them to the costs for proposed alternative systems. The cost model is available as an Excel workbook and provides an interactive tool for agencies to use to assess different fare payment system alternatives.
A Guide to Prepaid Cards for Transit Agencies. This white paper was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council to provide an overview of the prepaid card industry and the products available, including network-branded prepaid cards. It is directed to readers who work for or support transit agencies. The paper provides guidance on what transit agencies should look for when evaluating the feasibility and benefits of using prepaid cards as one element of an open loop fare collection system. The paper also provides useful information to other members of the prepaid card industry who have an interest in collaborating with the mass transit industry to expand the use of prepaid cards.
Co-Branded Multi-Application Contactless Cards for Transit and Financial Payment. This report provides an overview of an approach for transit/financial payment convergence that leverages co-branding card business models and the multi-application capabilities provided by smart card technology.
Serving Unbanked Consumers in the Transit Industry with Prepaid Cards. This white paper was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council to provide the transit and financial industries with an educational overview of the various methods available for providing and re-loading fare media to individuals who do not have credit or debit cards, nor checking or savings accounts, and generally lack relationships with traditional banking institutions.
Smart Cards and Parking. This report provides an overview of the smart card technology use in the parking and transit markets, discusses the benefits and challenges of using smart card technology for parking applications and includes profiles of successful transportation sector smart card implementations.
Transit and Contactless Financial Payment: New Opportunities for Collaboration and Convergence. This report provides a framework for discussion of the opportunities and challenges in linking transit and financial payment and presents options for how standard contactless financial payment devices can be used for transit fare payment.
Transit and Retail Payment: Opportunities for Collaboration and Convergence. This report describes the potential opportunities for collaboration on a combined transit-retail payment card.
Transit Payment System Security. This white paper was developed by the Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council to outline the approaches that the transit industry uses throughout payment systems to ensure the security of transactions and data and to discuss recent research on one contactless chip product that is used in many transit AFC systems.

Smart Cards and Transit

Mass transit agencies worldwide have been using stored value prepaid cards for electronic ticketing since the 1970s. Through the late 1990s, this market steadily began transitioning from magnetic stripe technology to contactless smart cards. Today, virtually all transit fare payment systems in the delivery and procurement stages use contactless smart cards as the primary ticket medium. Major deployments are already operational in cities around the world, including Hong Kong, Seoul, Pusan, Washington, D.C., and Shanghai.

Since the late 1990s, U.S. transit agencies have made significant investments in contactless smart card-based automatic fare collection (AFC) systems, with over $1 billion in contracts awarded for new systems that incorporate the latest developments in information technology (IT) and use contactless smart cards as the primary fare medium. State-of-the-art contactless smart card-based fare-collection systems are either operational or currently being delivered in Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; San Francisco; Oakland; Los Angeles; Chicago; San Diego; Seattle; Minneapolis; Houston; Boston; Philadelphia; Atlanta; and the New York/New Jersey area. Two of the largest implementations to date – Washington DC’s SmarTrip card and the Boston MBTA Charlie Card have issued over 2.5 million and over 1.4 million respectively. The result will be the introduction of an estimated 15 million contactless smart cards and over 20,000 payment processing devices.

As part of these initiatives, multiple regional agencies are forging cooperative alliances and establishing regional administrative bodies to manage activities such as card distribution, customer service operations, transaction processing, and IT. For example, the SmarTrip™ system, which operates in the Washington, D.C./Baltimore corridor, will include 17 independent transit operators, each with its own suite of products, discounting, and social equity programs.

In addition to these transit-specific fare payment systems, two pilots are now underway in the U.S. that are evaluating a new approach. Both New York City Transit and the Utah Transit Authority have pilots to accept standard financial payments industry-issued contactless credit and debit cards for fare payment directly at the point of entry.

U.S. Transit Smart Card Projects and Implementations

The following are active transit smart card implementations in the U.S.

Additional detail on transit use of smart cards can be found in the Smart Card Alliance reports Smart Cards and Parking and Transit and Retail Payment: Opportunities for Collaboration and Convergence.

International Transit Smart Card Projects and Implementations

Selected active international transit smart card implementations are listed below.

Smart Cards and Parking

The use of contact smart card technology is well established in the parking market, with parking equipment vendors providing solutions for all segments: single-space meters, multi-space meters, and off-street parking. Industry sources estimate that at least 75% of the tenders/bids for single-space meters received during 2004 and 2005 have specified the requirement to accept payment by both coin and a contact smart card, or to accept payment by coin and have the ability to be upgraded to accept payment by a contact smart card at a later date.

U.S. cities with contact smart card-based parking programs include: Albany, NY; Arlington, VA; Clemson, SC; Coral Gables, FL; Denver, CO; Miami, FL; Miami Beach, FL; Minneapolis, MN; Naperville, IL; New Haven, CT; New York, NY; Orlando, FL; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; Portland, OR; Princeton, NJ; Providence, RI; Sacramento, CA; San Diego, CA; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Santa Cruz, CA; Santa Monica, CA.

In addition to contact smart card-based programs, transit agencies using contactless smart cards for fare payment are expanding the use of the card to pay for parking. Active programs in the U.S. include: WMATA SmarTrip; Port Authority Transit Corporation (PATCO), operating in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA).

Additional information about the use of smart cards for parking can be found in the Smart Card Alliance report Smart Cards and Parking.