transit - Consult Hyperion

Open Payments – A Big Hit in the Big Apple

6th October 202314th February 2024by Lawrence SuttonLeave a comment

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has taken a giant leap forward in modernizing the way New Yorkers and visitors pay for their daily commutes with the introduction of OMNY (One Metro New York). OMNY, a contactless fare payment system, is not just another technological upgrade; it’s a game-changer that promises to revolutionize the way people travel in the Big Apple. OMNY was officially launched in May 2019, starting with a limited pilot program of the Open Payments system to accept physical bank cards and bank cards on mobile Pays on select subway lines and buses. The system’s initial introduction was met with anticipation and excitement, as commuters eagerly embraced the prospect of a more convenient and efficient payment method. Since then, the adoption of Open Payments has been nothing short of impressive.

The system had been deployed on all subway lines and buses in New York City. Commuters across the five boroughs now have easy access to the OMNY readers, ensuring a seamless travel experience, and the MTA has been working on expanding the reach of OMNY as it has started to distribute its closed-loop OMNY cards in retail locations. Just last month, the Roosevelt Island Tramway joined the tap-and-go system and became the first non-MTA operated entity to participate in OMNY. AirTrain JFK will start accepting OMNY’s contactless payments starting 10 October.

The MTA recently reported that approximately 67% of full-fare riders have made the switch from MetroCard to OMNY. Considering the delay in rolling out the OMNY Vending Machines, this figure appears to indicate that overall, the Open Payments system is a big hit. Evidence of this can be seen in OMNY reaching its 1-billion-tap milestone this summer. This is even more impressive considering they reached this milestone five months quicker than the TfL did (in spite of the ridership impacts brought on by the pandemic).

Why is Open Payments so successful for the MTA? Is it just because of the Wall Street executives who ride MTA? Or is it because the agency made a choice to offer Open Payments as the first phase of their new fare payment system, have been marketing it on every bus, subway car and vending machine and have been enhancing the offering with features like fare capping?

If you’re attending the APTA TRANSform conference in Orlando, find Lawrence and Simon who both worked on the OMNY project, and ask us for our thoughts. We would love to chat with you about it!

Cover art: Marc A. Hermann / MTA

Transport Ticketing Global – another fantastic year!

23rd March 20239th January 2024by Lawrence SuttonLeave a comment

The Transport Ticketing Global conference in London two weeks ago was a real treat. A big shout-out to the staff at Clarion Events who organized it. All of the speakers were first rate and provided the attendees an opportunity to learn lessons from experts, all over the world. One example was Sindi Msibi of ICT-Works in Johannesburg, South Africa. She spoke about the challenges they face with load-sharing the servers that run their system as they have rolling blackouts. Some areas will have no electricity for six hours per day. Their system performance is extremely important as their riders spend 40% of their income on transport versus 14% for the EU.

Many of the sessions at TTG focused on Account-Based Ticketing (ABT) systems, including a panel that I led on Successful ABT Implementations. The main lessons that I learned from this session were:

Implementing an ABT system is a journey. Many agencies procure a new ABT fare collection system and think – “Oh boy! I just need to turn this thing on and all of my problems are solved!” That’s not the case. Your riders have many different needs. The good news is that ABT systems can provide you the means to fulfill those needs, but it takes time. My panelists spoke honestly about where they are on that journey, and many were years in and still not done.

Not all ABT systems are equal. There were many vendors with booths that touted that they offered ABT systems. However, a fare collection system can be complicated and has many touchpoints both inside the agency and outside to your riders. It’s important to be sure you procure a system that is mature enough to meet your needs. This is why getting references from similar-sized agencies is important, and a good consultant can provide guidance about the difference between what PowerPoint slides say and the reality of what vendors have done.

To have a successful system, you have to analyze and update your business processes. My first job in transit was as a web developer at DART (Dallas, TX) working on our corporate intranet. Our boss insisted that we not just “web-ulize” their current paper processes but improve them. To get the most out of your new fare collection system, analyze your internal processes and ensure that you take advantage of the capabilities that your new ABT system offers your agency by considering the needs of your Revenue, Finance, Planning, Customer Service and Marketing departments.

And speaking of change, I would be remiss if I did not mention one of the best sessions of the conference titled Ticketing & Fares – Time to Retire. James Bain of Worldline made a great case for retiring the ticket and moving towards a subscription model that many other industries like Netflix and Spotify have successfully implemented. It really made me think hard about some of the basic assumptions I hold.

The final point I wanted to bring up is that I heard many people talk about Open Payment projects. Despite highly successful implementations in London and New York, there are still many misconceptions about this technology. One statement that I heard a few times at TTG was how Open Payments is only for tourists. As a New Yorker who regularly rides MTA and uses my American Express card in my Google Wallet (Thanks Jonathan Hill!) to pay my fare, I think it’s the best way to pay. After all, it’s how I pay for everything else I do in my daily life. I think many people are selling short the convenience that Open Payment brings for ALL riders. I hope they’ll rethink some of their assumptions.

For over 15 years Consult Hyperion has been advising transit agencies/authorities the world over. We have a deep understanding of the challenges in a successful implementation of ABT and Open Payment systems. Want to know more? Reach out to Simon Laker or myself to learn more at info@chyp.com.

Consult Hyperion partners with Osmodal Group

6th March 20239th January 2024by Consult Hyperion

Consult Hyperion and Osmodal Group partner to deliver combined mass transit payment expertise to new markets.

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Why I Hate Account-Based Ticketing

1st March 202317th May 2023by Lawrence SuttonLeave a comment

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The truth about Open Payments

31st January 20239th January 2024by Lawrence SuttonLeave a comment

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A decade of tapping on TfL buses

14th December 202214th December 2022by Simon LakerLeave a comment

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Merchant Payments Ecosystem 2021

11th February 202112th February 2021by David G.W. Birch1 Comment

When we look forward to 2021, it is no surprise that COVID-19 is the dominant factor. So far as the merchant payments world is concerned, the shape of the post-pandemic new normal transaction environment must be the key strategic consideration for stakeholders and I am desperately keen to hear the variety of informed opinion on this topic that I have come to expect at Merchant Payments Ecosystem every year. At Consult Hyperion we like to contribute to these conversations by providing a useful framework for discussion: our annual “Live 5”, our yearly set of suggestions for strategic focus. This year, we choose to look at the key issue of pandemic transformation and its impact of on the three key domains where our clients operate: Payment, Identity and Transit, together with (as is traditional!) a suggestion as to a technology that the POS world may not be thinking about but probably should be.

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Contact-free public transport (Part 2)

20th October 202021st October 2020by John Elliott1 Comment

This is the second of three blogs about technologies to support contact-free use of public transport.

Public transport operators have been making great efforts to make public transport safe during the pandemic. TfL recently launched a new app that makes it easier for passengers to plan their travel and avoid routes where they might come close to large numbers of people. There are claims that the rate of uptake of contactless by passengers has increased significantly since the pandemic and the demand for contact-free transactions on public transport. Visa recently offered a graph relating to global public transport contactless transactions. However, it is not clear what the actual contactless usage is since they are hidden behind month-on-month percentage increases which look enormous when the previous months had fallen off the proverbial cliff.

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Contact-free public transport (Part 1)

19th October 202021st October 2020by John ElliottLeave a comment

This is the first of three blogs about technologies to support contact-free use of public transport.

I heard on the radio that, despite ministers encouraging people in England back to work in their offices, most are staying at home. Commuter trains are about one-third full and buses are about 40% full. During the COVID-19 pandemic, demand for public transport fell off a cliff as governments told their people to stay at home. A major part of encouraging travellers to use public transport is the provision of systems that allow social distancing of passengers from staff, ideally eliminating the need to exchange physical tickets, cash and paper receipts.

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Transport Ticketing Global 2020

20th February 20207th August 2020by John ElliottLeave a comment

We were at TTGlobal (28-29 Jan 2020) this year for the fifth year running. It was a much bigger event in Kensington Olympia, London, with around 30% more attendees. This blog is a summary of how the two days went for us.

Day 1

The Plenary session had a surprise guest in the form of the Future of Transport Minister, George Freeman. He spoke eloquently about subjects very close to our hearts:

Seamless end-to-end ticketing
Integrated PAYG
Sustainability: he explained that the emissions of the transport sector are expected to double by 2050 unless something radical is done.

I have written before about a shift in government thinking about mobility that seems to be taking place. Let’s hope this signals more of the same and is followed with positive, decisive action.

Our CEO, Neil McEvoy, moderated the plenary panel on ‘the role of ticketing and urban transport policies in delivering MaaS,’ with panellists from:

Visa
Mastercard
Government of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dallas Areas Rapid Transit, USA
Uber

It was felt that to meet public policy objectives on congestion, air quality and CO₂ emissions, facilitating multi-modal, door-to-door, everyday journeys would be key. Facilitating journeys outside of a traveller’s home city or region is welcome but won’t meet wider goals alone.

Highlight of the rest of Day 1 included:

An update on the Future of Oyster from Transport for London. There are still no plans to turn it off, though the uptake of bank cards by the travelling public continues to rise steadily.
The Masabi presentation about Fare Payments as Service which was the subject of a recent podcast I made with Ben Whitaker.
Contactless bank card ticketing has come of age. There were lots of presentations about cEMV roll outs. Visa announced that they have solutions to the classic problems with bank cards (they don’t work for the unbanked or family groups). Contact them if you want to learn more.

Day 2

I moderated a panel about the future of ticketing technologies with panellists from:

Deutsche Bahn, Germany
GVB, Netherlands
The Human Chain, UK
Department for Transport, UK

We made a whistle-stop tour of up and coming technologies relevant to the different actors in the Mobility ecosystem, ranging from big data and augmented reality for Data Providers to Open Banking and distributed ledger technology for Maas Providers.

Other highlights for me from Day 2 included:

The UK’s Rail Delivery Group’s presentation on developing insight from barcode data, linking tickets sold with tickets scanned to inform revenue protection.
An update from Transport for the North on their Integrated and Smart Travel activities.
A presentation by MOTC about the difficulties faced by Qatar which currently is massively dependent on the private car and their plans to address the congestion problems they face.

Exhibition

I spent most of my time in the exhibition hall talking with contacts and vendors. I wish there had been time to attend more of the presentations.

I took the opportunity to record another podcast while at the event. This time with Eric Reese, CEO of ByteMark over from New York.

Awards

Once again, I was delighted to be one of the panel of judges for the awards presented at the Gala Dinner and Awards held at the Science Museum and hosted by comedian Phil Wang. It was decided by the judges to introduce a Highly Commended tier this year within each award category. This is in recognition that the standard or submissions was generally high. So, while Moscow won the Best Smart Ticketing Programme 2020, both of the following were Highly Commended:

Flowbird Transport Intelligence & Lothian Buses for their smooth role out of contactless payments card acceptance in Edinburgh in time for the Edinburgh Festival dramatic rise in population and bus usage;
Rail Delivery Group & Cubic Transportation Systems for the delivery of barcode ticketing under budget and achieving collaboration between 19 Train Operating Companies.

Overall, the event was a great success and great fun to be part of. Here’s to next year.

At Consult Hyperion we have experience globally with transport and mobile ticketing and deploying the latest technologies. If you would like to learn more, give us a call.