RTD Route 31X bus leaves Market Street Station via 16th Street. RTD is planning to switch to smart card fare collection on bus and light rail services. Inside Lane photo.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

RTD is moving closer to collecting bus and light rail fares through pre-paid smart cards with a $15.35 million contract to ACS Transport Solutions Inc. to provide the cards, readers, base data processing equipment and wireless communications.

The cards will be used by monthly pass holders as well as those who use the annual Eco Pass, and will provide RTD with the capability to market various niche fares, such as daily or weekly passes.

On the back end, the smart cards will give RTD the kind of tracking data is has long wanted to be able to properly price its fare programs, especially the annual Eco Pass, in which employers participate to provide annual transit passes to their work force. The data collection system will allow RTD to determine how and where holders use the passes. Currently, when pass holders board a bus, the driver pushes a button on the fare box to register what type of pass it is, but there is no ability to record who the user is.

On light rail, the new system ACS will provide comes with fare validators that will require the riders to tap their cards and deduct their fares. The wireless component of the system will transmit that information to central data processors. Fare inspectors will use new hand-held devices capable of reading riders’ cards to check whether they tapped the validators before boarding.

Numerous transit agencies use smart-card technology for fare collections. ACS recently installed its system in the Houston METRO transit district.

RTD believes that by using these cards rather than monthly or other passes, it eventually will be able to improve the bus boarding process, minimize the dwell time of buses at each stop and decrease the need to handle cash.

ACS’s proposal was slightly higher than the other bidder, Scheidt & Bachmann. But price was not the heaviest-weighted factor, at just 20 percent. RTD made the technical specifications worth 30 percent of the scoring. The qualifications and experience of the bidder were worth a combined 20 percent, project management plan was worth another 20 percent, and the resumes and experience of the actual key personnel the bidder would put on the Denver contract were worth 10 percent.

RTD has allocated $17.1 million in federal stimulus funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act toward this contact and another project to replace all the bus fare boxes in its fleet. The fare box replacement is estimated to cost $10.5 million, or up to $13.3 million if RTD includes several optional items in the procurement.

ACS Transport Solutions is a Columbia, Md., subsidiary of Affiliated Computer Services, a Xerox owned company.

According to an RTD staff memo, the ACS contract includes:
• The acquisition and installation of “on-board smart media processors” – smart card readers – for all of the approximately 1,100 buses in RTD’s fixed route fleet, both RTD and contractor operated;
• All mobile communications needed for the smart card readers to communicate and transmit data between the buses and the central data processing function, including communications/data processing equipment, for installation in all bus garages both RTD and contractor operated;
• The acquisition and installation of smart media validators – smart card readers – at light rail platforms;
• All communications needed for the light rail validators to transmit data between light rail stations and the central data processing function;
• Hand-held smart media validators for light rail fare inspectors to use to monitor riders’ proper utilization of the prepaid smart fare media on light rail vehicles;
• The development and implementation of all back-office data reporting, accumulation, storage and analysis tools;
• Initial program rollout including initial program development – privacy policy, community outreach and customer education programs, etc. – program administration and distribution of approximately 200,000 smart cards and decals to participants in RTD’s Eco Pass, Neighborhood Eco Pass and College Pass programs, included in the first year of this project;
• Call center operations, customer service and education, and ongoing administrative services for the smart card program for the first several years of operation;
• All training and software support;
• Options for the acquisition of additional equipment as RTD services expand, for example, additional light rail validators for the FasTracks West Corridor now under construction and other FasTracks corridors as they are opened.