Smart Cards, Slow Deployment: Findings from Interviews with U.S. Transit Agencies

This report summarizes findings from interviews with transit officials at seven agencies in North America about smart card evaluations, expectations, and implementation. As part of the project, “Designing a Policy Framework for a Statewide Transit Smart Card System,” this report was preceded by a literature review of smart card projects and an online survey of transit agencies’ knowledge of and interest in interoperable smart card systems for fare collection. The literature review found a lot of booster-like enthusiasm for smart cards, but few studies that have rigorously evaluated smart card system benefits relative to their costs, nor have they addressed the array of institutional issues that hinder implementation. Our survey revealed that many transit agencies are in the process of considering or have already adopted smart card systems, often without clear or certain information about the costs of these systems. Prior to forming collaborations with other agencies, surveyed agency officials tended to underestimate the difficulty of multi-agency partnerships. Once they entered these collaborations, however, agency officials tended to cite multi-agency agreement as the most significant barrier, more difficult to overcome than the financial costs of the systems. Interviews conducted with transit agency officials focused on the decision-making and collaboration processes involved in adopting interoperable smart card systems, and the barriers that they faced. This report documents our findings, and begins first with a description of our interview methods, followed by summaries and highlights of each of the seven smart card projects currently being evaluated or implemented. The case studies include projects in Los Angeles County, the San Francisco Bay Area, Ventura County, Orange County, Santa Barbara County, the Washington Metropolitan Area, and Southeastern Pennsylvania. The report concludes with a summary of issues common to the seven cases, some strategies used in implementing interoperable smart card systems, and a description of next steps of our research.