Contactless fare payment systems are common place among most of the major transit operators in North America, as well as in Europe and Asia. Based on radio frequency, this form of smart card technology is well suited to large systems since they require high through-put, security, and lower equipment maintenance costs. Electronic payment adoption on commuter rail service, however, has lagged behind other transit modes for a variety of reasons, some of which include: open or non-barrier passenger boarding, manual fare collection by conductors, and the complexity of adopting new technology. Currently, there are no examples of commuter rail contactless fare payment systems in the United States. Within this context a study was undertaken to prove the concept of using non-proprietary technology to conduct contactless electronic fare payment on-board commuter rail services.

Participating Institutions:

1. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA)
2. ECE Department, College of Engineering, Temple University Coordinating Institutions:
3.  NJ Transit Corp.
4. Port Authority Transportation Company (PATCO)

Procurement Agency: PADOT
Project Contact: Gerald J. Kane, Manager, Capital Program Planning - Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority

The objective of this project was to integrate several non-proprietary plug-and-play, off-the-shelf products and record on-board cash fare transaction and process electronic payments on commuter rail transportation service. These products include personal digital assistants (PDAs) and wireless 802.11 access points that can ensure the accurate and secure electronic payment and data retrieval.

View PDF file of Scope of Project.

SEPTA tests the PDA to record on-board cash transactions and record passenger data, and, once completed, Coalition Funding in support of Project Phase 2 will be used to test acceptance of electronic payment applications, beginning with the Authority's current magnetic media and moving toward read/write magnetic and smart card technology. The project intends to develop specifications consistent with the Regional Interface Specification (RIS) developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Briefly, this includes the use of the ISO 1443 Type A contactless interface communications protocol, message sets, data dictionary and security protocols between the card and the card interface device (the PDA). Under controlled test environments, the PDA devices will involve equipping railroad conductors with the devices for on-board use to transact on-board fare payment automatically. The units will store payment and ridership information until conductors complete their scheduled runs, at which time the PDA's will upload the stored information to a sever using wireless communication.

The major lessons learned from this project centered on the assumption of using non-proprietary, off-the-shelf technology to build a commercial wireless payment application. The research group developed the Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the PDA and the server-end applications using Java programs, so that it could be easily ported into any computing platform. The availability of extensive Markup Language (XML) provided a variety GUI interfaces and schedules for the conductor labor force without modifying the software.

This GUI created the means necessary to capture passenger trip information from origin zone and calculate fares from the fare table. The PDA stored the transaction data and later downloaded it to central server for statistical and accounting purposes. In this model, the conductor PDA served as a proxy for a bus farebox or subway turnstile; that is, the point of entry to the commuter rail vehicle. This demonstrated the ability of an “electronic handshake” between the passenger fare instrument and a sales device. Virtually all commuter rail operators rely on visual inspection of calendar based passes, or hand punching paper tickets. This electronic fare payment allowed for the following to materialize:

• Ensuring accurate monetary transactions.
• Making sales data readily available for logistical and accounting uses in near real time.
• Reducing the amount of paperwork and margin for error.

The crux of the portable wireless and smartcard-based ticketing system was software integration. The hardware included commercial components so the software was designed in such a way that it is compatible with other hardware in the event that the use of different components is desired. All software applications for the wireless communication interface, GUI and server were created within the Java environment. The whole system utilized a wireless connected interface between the PDA and DATECS PP-55MS mobile printer.

$150,000 total project costs (Phase 2, as described above).
$75,000 in Coalition funds (Phase 2, as described above).