The widespread adoption of automated fare collection technology has enhanced the rider experience, reduced dwell times, and freed up bus operators to focus on the road and not the farebox. While modern fareboxes are a big part of this equation, they are just one small piece of extensive backend and on-the-ground infrastructure and operations that make it possible for boarding to take just a few seconds.
Gaining fare collection efficiency on the bus shifts time and money expenditures to other places along the revenue operations journey. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce the overall cost of these resources, such as Genfare Link 2.0, which can empower your transit agency to lower the combined footprint of fare collection, strategy, reconciliation, and reporting.
Reducing costs
For as many different types of riders you serve, there are as many choices of fare media. Each method of collecting fares benefits different customers and carries different costs.
For example, although collecting cash fares can be expensive, continuing to accept cash critically supports equitable mobility for unbanked or underbanked customers. And while open payment promotes faster boarding times and rider satisfaction, agencies end up absorbing card transaction fees and the costs of the equipment and tools that reinforce these payment methods.
Saving time
Transit agencies need to lead with data collected along with fares to understand customers. For many agencies, that requires the time-consuming task of manually consolidating data collected across vendors or systems.
Managing multiple vendor solutions or spreadsheets isn’t sustainable or cost-effective. Agencies must consolidate and centralize operations and data sources to balance customer convenience with the rising cost of fare collection.
What constitutes fare collection?
When we talk about fare collection, we’re actually talking about revenue operations. To collect fares efficiently and accurately, agencies need to look beyond the payment transaction to find efficiencies at every step. A careful review of data can find opportunities to save time and money exist across the board, such as in functions like:
General operations
- Predictive maintenance of equipment, leading to savings in labor, materials, shipping, and warehousing space.
- Proper training for drivers to ensure fares are consistently and accurately collected.
Cash management
- Data-driven procedures for collecting, validating, vaulting, sorting, counting, and transporting cash at each step.
Reconciliation
- Ensuring your collected cash fares match the amount deposited in your bank account.
- Reducing the need for time-consuming discrepancy investigations.
- Raising revenue by preventing cash shrinkage.
Communication and collaboration
- Optimizing processes and leveraging technology to improve collaboration between the teams that play a hand in fare collection.
We redesigned Genfare Link to become your agency’s single source of truth that empowers your teams to make smarter and quicker decisions. Centering data quality and insights access within fare collection will instill confidence in your decision-making and help you achieve goals.
Time is money — and savings for your agency
Transit agencies commonly spend large amounts of time pulling various reports to get a pulse on their operations. When they finally have a “clean” report, the data may be stale and the right moment to act may have passed.
Genfare Link’s cloud-based solution addresses this inefficiency by automatically transferring all data sources from the ground into one reporting platform. Its open architecture connects all hardware and software from every vendor to empower your leadership with streamlined, on-demand data. Having Genfare Link serve as your one-stop shop enables you to:
- Stay nimble: Instead of following a time-based schedule, apply predictive modeling to learn the best times to vault to minimize your cash transporting costs. Quickly pull equipment maintenance reports to get ahead of hardware fixes and remotely deploy software updates. This feature equates to an estimated time savings of $20,000 a year or 300 hours of manhours.
- Automate: Wi-Fi or cellular enablement supports real-time or near real-time data transfer, which cuts physical probing from minutes to near seconds and reduces the time to park.
- Market with intention: Ridership reporting gives your teams a comprehensive snapshot of your customers’ behaviors and preferences. Increased customer knowledge informs and inspires more targeted, budget-conscious marketing initiatives and placement of ticket sales outlets that increase profitability while maintaining mobile equity.
- Structure fares strategically: By knowing who is riding what routes and how they are paying, you can better determine how to serve riders equitably with reduced fares, targeted variable fares (such as school dismissal times), fare capping, organizational distribution, and other fare structures.
- Eliminate cash shrinkage: With all revenue data streams centralized and accessible, you become better equipped to track and reconcile your cash at every step, down to the penny. Having complete data transparency into how your cash moves through your system makes it easier to investigate discrepancies and improve fare collection practices that contribute to shrinkage. We’ve estimated that agencies could theoretically decrease their time spent on report reconciliation by up to 90% per week, which could translate into savings of more than $120,000 per year and 2,000 hours of effort.
While getting customers on board is a crucial part of your business, your ability to reduce costs and retain fare revenue will ensure long term financial stability in the face of rising expenses and budget constraints.
Genfare Link means easy reporting for easy decision-making
If you can’t track the who, what, when, where, and how of the fare collection process, you can’t prevent minor issues from becoming expensive or disruptive obstacles or seize opportunities to grow ridership and cut costs. For many transit agencies, the issue isn’t just a lack of data. It’s also the ability to centrally store, customize, and package the data into a comprehensive, readable, and shareable report–whenever you need it.
Contact your Business Development Director to learn how to move your agency from the passenger to the driver’s seat of your fare collection operations.
