Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) recently rolled out a mobile phone application that allows commuters to purchase tickets for the commuter rail lines in the MBTA system. MBTA officials cited not only time savings and convenience for commuters as benefits, but the new smart phone apps will actually save commuters money.
The current ticketing system requires commuters to pay a $3 surcharge if they buy a ticket on the train if they board at a station where there is a ticket seller. With the mobile app, they can buy tickets anywhere, with no additional fees. While it is considered a small side benefit, another thing MBTA expects to get from using the new mobile apps is a tremendous reduction in debris from used punch-tickets.
There are many advantages to the new system, including saving the MBTA from handling nearly $20 million in cash, the amount that passes from commuters to conductors each year with the traditional onboard ticketing system. The amount of risk this mitigates is substantial, as the more cash that changes hands the higher the risk that some of that cash may never make it to its intended destination. Controlling risk is a major concern for any organization and the more commuters that use the new mobile ticketing app the more MBTA can cut risk associated with handling cash.
MBTA is pioneering the use of mobile ticketing among U.S. based transportation systems, but the same ticketing technology is common throughout Europe. The company MBTA contracted to create the mobile app for them, Masabi, has already provided apps for half of the rail lines in Britain. New York’s Metro-North Railroad recently announced it will pilot a program with Masabi’s ticketing technology next year and Dallas and Portland are following in New York’s footsteps with their own plans to implement mobile apps for their rail and bus systems.
Part of what helped MBTA decide the mobile ticketing app would be worth pursuing was the results of a study conducted by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that showed that 76% of commuters in the study routinely carried smart phones. That is a full ten percentage points higher than it was just a year earlier, and their study also revealed that half of these commuters used their smart phones to make purchases. This is much higher than general mobile purchasing trends, as only one in five in the general population make purchases with their smart phones.
Governmental entities and transportation systems have not historically been huge early adopters when it comes to new technology, but this large scale adoption of mobile purchasing technology has far fewer barriers to entry than many old technologies did. Many technological innovations that had the potential to drive change and increase efficiency have traditionally come with large capital investment requirements, while some of the newer technologies being considered have much smaller capital requirements, relative to the benefits they offer.
With mobile technology in its early stages, there are likely to be many more technology innovations that could dramatically change commuters public transportation experience. What comes next remains to be seen, but one thing that is certain is that commuters will reap the benefits of the current wave of mobile technology adoption by public transportation systems.
