New Fare Payment Options Rolling in at Halifax Transit Intended to Boost Ridership

By Eleanor Willner-Fraser, NSEN Community Engagement Volunteer

Paying for taking the bus or ferry—whether that means feeding a ticket into the fare box, rooting for change, or flashing a student card to the driver—is an action so commonplace that many of us don’t even think about it. The fare payment method may seem like a tiny component of the overall transit experience. However, it’s part of the larger push to increase public transit ridership as one solution to climate change and connects to larger questions around equitable access to transportation. And there are big fare payment changes rolling in at Halifax Transit—slowly, that is.

The transit agency plans to transition to electronic fare payment in four phases, with the goal of being completely contactless and cashless by 2025. The first phase will be a mobile app that the rider shows to the driver. Then, if everything goes well, Halifax Transit will install hardware for validating the app automatically. The next phases will be reloadable smart cards and, finally, contactless bank cards.

Halifax Transit developed its four-phase strategy after seriously considering switching to larger transit tickets on the way to electronic fare payment. The new tickets would have been approximately the size of a five-dollar bill and not reusable. The new fare boxes would not accept the current ticket size but could eventually take smart card, smartphone, and credit card payments—with the addition of a piece of hardware. Thankfully, the transit agency scrapped that idea. Instead, it put together a report exploring the pros and cons of using reloadable smart cards, pre-paid smart cards, a mobile app, or contactless bank cards.

All four options are anticipated to increase ridership while reducing boarding time and the use of cash and tickets. They differ, among other things, in their ability to capture data to inform transit planning, their cost, and their environmental impact. Halifax Transit decided to start with a mobile app because it would be the cheapest and quickest to implement, with apps already developed and no hardware needed at the start. An app also ticks the box of being “perceived as modern/state-of-the-art.”

Many fare payment apps automatically switch over to a pass once you exceed the threshold number of trips for a given time period. In the future, the apps may also be able to integrate with Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), which means using one app for planning and booking multiple transportation options, such as transit, taxis, and trains.

(VIA THE STAR)

What about people without access to a smartphone or the necessary technology skills for using the app—or even a bank card? And what about tourists and occasional transit users who can’t be bothered to download yet another app that they’ll hardly use? Halifax Transit assures us that riders will still be able to use current fare payment methods like cash and tickets—at least for now. The Halifax Transit report also notes that, in 2019, 85% of Canadians and 78% of Atlantic Canadians owned a smartphone. The app’s introduction will only leave about 22% of residents behind. 

Just how effective is switching the fare payment method at encouraging people to take transit instead of a private vehicle? Fare collection does influence our perception of transit’s convenience, quality, and accessibility. The National Association of City Transportation Officials estimates that fare collection and boarding take up a third to half of vehicle revenue time (the time that the bus is on the road). If nothing else, speeding up fare collection with a mobile app, and eventually smart cards and bank cards, will help buses stick to their schedule—always a bonus.

Many factors that influence ridership are outside the transit agency’s control, such as population growth or decline, economic conditions, and parking availability. Areas where the agency can make changes include fares, routes, service frequency and reliability, passenger amenities, and marketing. While route restructuring and expansion is likely to have a larger impact, how—and how much—transit users pay is significant as well. 

For example, Kingston, Ontario’s introduction of free transit passes for high school students contributed to a 73% increase in transit ridership there between 2012 and 2017. A student transit pass pilot project is, in fact, in the works in the Halifax Regional Municipality, to complement existing initiatives like making transit fares free for children 12 and under.

And about that fare payment app? The launch date is not yet confirmed, although Halifax Transit was originally talking about late 2020 or early 2021.