Regional Integration and Clearinghouse
With the changing economic times, commuters are looking at different options besides driving their gas guzzling vehicles and sitting in dead-locked traffic for five days a week. Over the past two years, most transit agencies have seen an increase in ridership as more and more people take to buses and trains to get to the final destinations. However, one problem still remains apparent in most major cities, how to get from the far-reaching suburbs all the way into downtown or across to the other side of the city without having to change bus or rail networks to ride?.
As more and more agencies try to address this growing problem, connectivity and interoperability come to light. If a patron could board an express bus in the outlying suburbs and then switch to a light rail or take another mode of service to their end point, all while not having to worry about which pass or ticket to have in order to be compatible with the various types of fare collection equipment and differing agency fare policies, then the issue would be solved. But the challenge is not just from the patron’s perspective, the difficulties lie oftentimes within the agencies themselves. With most agencies working in their own silos because of government funding or restrictions, they are forced to create their own methods and means. This approach has created different systems and does not easily allow for cross-connectivity with other agencies. To this challenge, this is where Lumenor Consulting Group can help devise a workable solution.
How can Lumenor Help
Lumenor can investigate Regional Integration solutions by working within multiple agencies to assess the ridership and revenue models, review fare policy from the standpoint of connecting patrons from different parts of the system, aggregate fare collection equipment and operations to determine touch points or common means, and to provide a back office solution whereby a regional fare collection clearinghouse can be implemented.
In addition to interfacing with external clearinghouse, Lumenor can also work to create regional clearinghouse where multiple agencies can settle transactions across the network. This type of clearinghouse can be accomplished on the front end with process rules such as transfers, zone based fare structures, trip counters, other fare methodologies. Lumenor can also provide you with the ability to process the regionalized settlement in the back end through intra agency transfers, reconciliations, and account settlement reporting. Oftentimes, this type of solution can be provided seamlessly across legacy and incompatible systems by implementing an integrated reporting process.
The goal of this solution is to:
- reduce cash and fraud in the system
- provide clear ridership and revenue data for future impact studies
- create proper clearinghouse for fares to the correct agency
- implement effective accounting procedures for the backend data
- build a community of services that attract riders and assist them in reaching their destinations
- evaluate new technologies such as SmartCards and PayPass options across multimodal services
