Final element of ticketing system in Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area delivered

In partnership with TriMet, C-TRAN and Portland Streetcar, INIT has delivered the final element of the newly launched Hop Fastpass™ e-fare ticketing system.

The ticketing system has been in operation since August, but riders can now pay for fares using a mobile wallet such as Android Pay, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, as well as contactless bank cards. They just tap their phone or card or any of the 1,200 INIT validators and hop on board the Portland Streetcar, C-TRAN buses including The Vine, TriMet’s buses, MAX light rail and WES Commuter Rail.

“My vision was to build innovative, open payments, open architecture fare collection system for all of our regional riders,” said Chris Tucker, TriMet Project Manager. “We now have open payments, real-time fare calculation, daily and monthly fare capping, and seamless travel across three regional transit agencies and two states.”

As well as the added security and ease of payment afforded with contactless payment, a further advantage of the system is the daily fare capping. This means that riders never have to worry about spending more than necessary while using public transport.

Furthermore, riders using the Hop Fastpass™ cards benefit from monthly fare capping, which offers passengers more cost-effective transport options for travel throughout the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area.

INIT’s back-end processing software, MOBILEvario, serves as the core intelligence for the account-based and open payment fare ticketing system. It manages and processes fares in real time, recognises and processes revenue sharing, as well as manages accounts and automates reconciliations for all three agencies.

Offline processing is another added benefit of the system as in the event of a network outage, fare payments can still be processed, meaning revenues are not lost.

The system was developed using open architecture APIs so that other partners can be easily incorporated.