Miami Latest U.S. City to Introduce Open-Loop Transit Payments

_{(This premium article was originally published in August 2019. © Mobility Payments and Forthwrite Media.)}

Transit officials in Miami-Dade County, Fla. are the latest in the U.S. to introduce open-loop payments of fares with contactless credit and debit cards and bank card credentials on NFC wallets, launching the service in August 2019 on the city’s relatively small metro network, with plans to expand to buses later.

The Metrorail service handles around 70,000 rides per day, ranking it as the 10^th largest metro service in the U.S., a country not known for its mass transit rail services. The new payments service from the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works, or DTPW, follows open-loop fare collection services introduced by the Chicago Transit Authority and, more recently, TriMet in Portland, Ore., and a large pilot by New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or MTA.

Transit agencies in Boston and Philadelphia also have delayed open-loop implementation projects in the works. But transit officials in the San Francisco Bay Area, which are revamping their closed-loop Clipper card, have decided against supporting open-loop payments. And small service launched by the Utah Transit Authority years ago was later ended. 

With U.S. banks this year rolling out contactless EMV credit and debit cards widely–with an estimated 300 million Visa-branded contactless cards expected to be deployed by the end of 2020–more transit agencies in the U.S. are expected to support the service. But many small to mid-sized agencies could stick with closed-loop or even cash fare payment, either with paper tickets or contactless or other cards, and possibly apps that display tickets requiring visual inspection by transit workers or QR codes or bar codes to be scanned. 

U.S.-based Cubic Transportation Systems is the systems integrator on the Miami project, having won a $33 million contract in 2016 to provide the open-loop technology, including upgraded fare terminals, along with 10 years of back office cloud computing and support services. Cubic called the Miami system a “hybrid” implementation, not nearly as extensive and costly as the vendor implemented for much larger transit agencies. 

Cubic has, in fact, implemented open-loop services for agencies in Chicago, New York and London, along with Sydney and Vancouver. London, where open-loop payments launched on buses in December 2012 and on the London Underground and other modes of transit in September 2014, has become a global showcase for open-loop transit payment technology. 

But Chicago’s system, which included acceptance of closed-loop Ventra cards in addition to credit and debit cards, and which launched in 2013, was a debacle when introduced. The system overcharged customers on fares or did not charge at all, among other problems. Project backers explain that the Chicago Transit Authority enforced tight deadlines for the launch and wanted the new payments system to launch all at once. 

Cubic later fixed the Chicago system, but has learned its lesson. It is phasing in the new payments services, such as the $540 million-plus OMNY project in New York City. MTA launched the first phase of OMNY at a limited number of subway stations in Manhattan and on MTA-operated buses in the smallest of New York City’s five boroughs, Staten Island. The MTA said plans call for extending open loop to all of MTA’s New York City Subway stations and bus routes, as well as the Staten Island Railway, by the end of 2020, with the rollout of OMNY scheduled for final completion by 2023. 

MTA is the largest transit authority in the U.S. by far, handling a total of 3.7 billion rides last year, most on the New York City Subway, according to the American Public Transportation Association. The Miami-Dade transit agency, on the other hand, provided just under 81 million total trips last year, including 19.3 million on its Metrorail and 51 million on buses. 

To pay, riders on Metrorail can tap their Visa- and Mastercard-branded credit and debit cards and American Express-branded credit cards or these tokenized card credentials on NFC smartphones and smartwatches supporting Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and the wearable-only Fitbit Pay. 

Metrorail has only two lines and 23 stations, where users tap their cards or devices to pay. Each trip costs $2.25, but starting with the third trip, riders will get a daily-capped price of $5.65. That is the same price they would get if they bought a 1-day pass, which they could tap with agency’s closed-loop Easy Card or its Easy Pay app on Android and iOS handsets. With the app, riders display the ticket or scan a bar code to ride. The transit agency plans to offer daily caps on its Metrobus service, as well, when it launches open loop on board buses. 

As with other open-loop fare collection projects rolling out, Miami-Dade customers using credit and debit won’t get a number of other fares or discounts only available with closed-loop fare media, such as weekly and monthly passes and student and other concessionary discounts. Riders must continue to use the closed-loop Easy Card or Easy Pay app for these fares, at least for now. Aside from the cap on the third and succeeding rides in a day, Miami-Dade customers using open-loop cards or NFC wallets must pay full fares for each ticket. 

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