April 12, 2024 Cubic to Upgrade Twin Cities’ Transit Fare System

Cubic Transportation Systems has won a contract from Metro Transit of Minneapolis-St.Paul to upgrade and modernize the region’s fare system.

In efforts to modernize and upgrade the Minneapolis-St Paul Go-To Contactless Fare System, Metro Transit of Minneapolis-St. Paul has granted a contract to Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS). Within the new program, Metro Transit stands alongside major cities such as New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago, all of which are revolutionizing fare systems to include contactless bank card acceptance while harnessing Cubic’s real-time wireless and account-based processing solutions along with state-of-the-art cloud technologies.

Leveraging Cubic’s Urban Mobility processing platform, Metro Transit’s 40 million annual riders will be able to tap their contactless bank cards, including those residing in Apple Pay and Google Pay, to seamlessly pay for fares with no need to separately procure a dedicated smart card or ticket.

“For nearly 20 years, Cubic has proudly worked with Metro Transit on Go-To, providing regional transit riders the ability to use a contactless smart card to pay fares across the Twin Cities’ Light Rail, Bus Rapid Transit and Commuter Rail operations,” said Matt Newsome, CTS Senior Vice President and General Manager. “These upgrades will not only foster a more efficient Metro Transit but one that enables a broad range of new rider conveniences to the traveling public.”

Accordingly, for those riders not carrying or wishing to use such bank-issued products, the Go-To card will be enhanced via registration with a powerful account management system that will allow those users to load fare products such as stored value and period passes to their accounts through an enhanced range of channels including vending machines, the web and retail outlets.

“These enhancements provide significant improvement in convenience for our visitors, tourists and occasional riders while preserving a full range of incentive and concession capabilities for all user groups,” said Dennis Dworshak, Senior Manager, Fare Collections for Metro Transit.

The new regional system is designed to ensure equity across all user demographics while providing the maximum level of convenience to visitors and occasional and everyday riders. The platform is also designed to support a range of open interfaces to allow for flexible extensions over time including more powerful smartphone utilities and integration with additional modalities such as micro-transit, ride share, car share and parking.

The upgrade includes the replacement of the agency-hosted back-office fare management software with the most recent Cubic enterprise management system to reside in the Microsoft Azure Cloud. The new platform includes the latest release of Cubic payment gateway software (Cubic Payment Application) that is network certified to meet both PCI and EMV requirements and includes the processing logic to encrypt and protect bankcard data, allow flexible fare pricing, and aggregate fare transactions to control processing costs.

In addition to the convenience options afforded to riders, Metro Transit operations will benefit from reduced operating costs associated with fare policy management, reporting operations and IT operations, along with more advanced security management and administrative tools. As part of the agreement, Cubic will provide Metro Transit with application support services for five years from launch of the new cloud-based system.

The complete range of fare terminals including those on over 2,000 regional buses and across 140 Light Rail, BRT and Commuter Rail stations will be upgraded with the latest state-of-the-art reader/processor technology to enable the new features supported by the Cloud Based System. Buses will receive new multi-media contactless fare validators while station equipment will be upgraded in place thus maximizing the return on investment by extending the useful life of this equipment.

Subscribe to Industry Today