The Key system will record thousands of electronic transactions each minute, allowing growth beyond SEPTA’s current ridership of more than a million trips each weekday. The SEPTA Key system will eliminate the collection, processing and packaging of 35,000,000 traditional subway tokens every year. Services include an outsourced customer support center, back-end systems management as well as equipment maintenance services. The new SEPTA Key system is a flexible “open” payment system offering a variety of means for customers to pay fares across all modes of transportation operated by SEPTA, including SEPTA-issued smart card and magnetic media, bank-issued contactless cards, key fobs, mobile phones, and cash. LTK assisted SEPTA with design of faregate layouts at subway, elevated and regional rail stations, passenger throughput during and after installation, oversight of installation of faregates and vending equipment, and integration with safety and communications systems and scheduling. LTK developed the detailed technical specification and procurement documents, as well as the summary systems requirement specification and operations analysis documentation for the system design decisions. LTK worked closely with SEPTA on the procurement strategy, including providing fare policy and alternatives analyses. It’s also capable of connecting with banking systems for transaction processing. This new state-of-the-art, integrated, electronic fare payment, distribution, collection, and processing system uses all the best practices of modern technologies in the consumer and fare payment sectors.
LTK was selected by SEPTA to provide technical, procurement support, and program management services for new fare payment technology, known as the SEPTA Key system. Finally, SEPTA wanted to give customers easy access to online, self-service account tools.
SEPTA also identified the need to strengthen its revenue processes, reduce the frequency of cash use, and produce real-time operations and revenue data to improve agency decision-making. SEPTA’s vision included new customer-friendly fare products and media accepted across all SEPTA services, including buses, light rail vehicles (trolleys), rapid transit, commuter rail, paratransit services and SEPTA’s parking system. SEPTA wanted to expand ways customers pay fares and expand fare media sales channels, especially for customers without access to traditional banking services. To improve customer convenience while increasing ridership and revenue, SEPTA needed to overhaul its fare collection system. So maybe public transit is the secret to retaining our young talent? At least for college students, SEPTA Key might actually be worth the wait.Improved customer convenience is the SEPTA Key. Here’s Noda:Ĭity Hall might be skeptical, in its traditional habit of being afraid of all change, but blurring the geographic boundary between town and gown can only benefit a strapped city government that needs to rebuild a tax base to fund schools, infrastructure, and services, with 500,000 fewer people than the city was designed for.Ĭampus Philly also found that college students who felt a high degree of familiarity with the city were almost 20 percent more likely to stay after graduation. That could disperse and mitigate some of the negative externalities (aka gentrification) of students flooding certain swaths of West Philadelphia and North Philly-which are chosen for their proximity to campus. More importantly, the change might encourage students to live further off-campus. There’d be less students driving, and therefore, less need for campus parking. The advantages of giving students free-at-the-point-of-use transit could be several-fold. Pittsburgh college students pay a $180-per-year fee to receive unlimited travel on its public transit system. There is a flat fee applied to each student’s tuition cost, which is negotiated between the public transit agencies and consortiums of universities and colleges, after which unlimited rides are allowed. Pittsburgh and Providence are two cities that allow students to get “free” fares with student IDs.
The high cost is probably why only 50 percent of college students use SEPTA regularly and only 42 percent have a positive approval rating of our transit service, according to a survey by Campus Philly.
Right now, they can buy monthly TransPasses at a 10-percent discount, which, for a student living here year-round, would total up to about $1,000. But college students may become huge beneficiaries of SEPTA Key. The new system will feature increased fares ($2.50 and due to rise again in 2016) for the general public.
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