(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 5034: Simpler Payment Systems for Agencies and Riders
October 16, 2024
This week on the Talking Headways podcast we’re joined by Gillian Gillett of CalITP and Dan Baker, of the Connecticut Department of Transportation to discuss how agencies can create simpler payment and travel experiences for transit riders. We chat about the Connecticut Integrated Mobility Project, building payment system capacity and merchant services for smaller transit agencies, and the need for digital customer first thinking in a paper based industry.
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Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the episode:
[00:01:54] Jeff Wood: Dan Baker and Gillian Gillette. Welcome to the Talking Headways podcast. [00:02:03] Dan Baker: Thank you. Nice to be here. Thanks, Jeff. [00:02:04] Jeff Wood: Yeah. Thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourselves? We’ll start with Dan and go with Jillian after. [00:02:10] Dan Baker: Sure, so my name is Dan Baker. I am with the Connecticut Department of Transportation. I lead our customer experience unit, which is in our office of transit and ride sharing. So I’ve been with the Connecticut D. O. T. for a little over 7 and a half years started with our office of rail. So have a background in rail operations, but now I’m on our bus side of the house and I’ve been leading a few different projects, mainly focused on fare technology and fare policy of late. [00:02:37] Gillian Gillett: And I’m Gillian Gillette. I work for Caltrans, which is the California Department of Transportation. I manage the California Integrated Mobility Program, and I’m also standing up a new data and digital services division for Caltrans. [00:02:50] Jeff Wood: Awesome. And, I always ask this question because I like to hear people’s origin stories, but I’m wondering what got you all interested in transportation policy? [00:02:58] Dan Baker: That’s a great question. So my mom actually works for the Connecticut Department of Transportation, but she’s on the engineering side. I did not get the engineering brains from her. So I went the planning route, but she’s a civil engineer focused on bridge safety. So that was my introduction to transportation here in Connecticut. [00:03:18] I actually grew up in a town that did not have bus service for over 50 years. And it was. 1 of the more populated towns in the state of Connecticut that didn’t have fixed group bus service and that actually changed earlier this year. For the 1st time we brought a transit route 532 to Southington. [00:03:33] So that was a pretty cool kind of time for me, working in public transportation and seeing that happen. I wish it was a active route when I was growing up in the town and maybe that would have been my, sparked my interest in public transit. But here I am, nevertheless. [00:03:49] You’ll [00:03:49] Jeff Wood: spark somebody else’s interest, right? [00:03:51] Dan Baker: That’s right. [00:03:52] Gillian Gillett: Let’s see. I was born in Europe, but grew up mostly in Chicago and always had access to public transit because it has a great system that’s only gotten better. But yeah, and I grew up super poor, so transit was a way to an affordable way to get around and be exposed to things that I was interested in. [00:04:10] And then I’ve always lived in big cities that have had transit. So I took it for granted. And then when I came to California, it’s just noticeably not so great here, even in the Bay Area where I live. When I started to have children, I recognized that this was really something that was going to impede their mobility if I didn’t do something about it. [00:04:30] So I stopped the other systems engineering I was doing and volunteered to work with a politician and here I am. [00:04:39] Jeff Wood: It’s funny how we get to these places, right? Where in Europe were you born? [00:04:43] Gillian Gillett: I was born in Germany, in West Germany. Okay. In Hamburg, which is the home of the first Verkehrsverbunde. [00:04:49] Jeff Wood: Oh, there you go. [00:04:50] I feel like lately I’ve been doing a kind of a pre pandemic reunion tour. Jillian, we last chatted with you November in 2019 here in the studio, and you shared a little bit about CalITP, but perhaps you could give us a little bit of a basic refresher of what you all are doing and how it came about. [00:05:06] Gillian Gillett: In 2018, California published a state rail plan, which I think the state rail plans are required by the federal government, and normally they’re farely routine, but California invested heavily starting in 2016 and some analyses to answer basic questions could we have a network in California, an integrated transportation network in California? [00:05:27] And if so, what needs improvement? And if not, what’s missing? So the answers were that. Thank you very much. Mostly it’s not infrastructure that’s missing. It’s any coordination because everybody works separately and there’s very little collab. There’s not insufficient collaboration to produce a network and the specific item that was called out in terms of consumer customer experience was. [00:05:50] Ticketing, which is the word that we use back then, but the idea was you should be able to take any trip. You wanted to cross the state just like you can drive across the state. And that’s almost impossible to do now. At the same time, the state was. Redoing the gas tax and making a big compromise or a big change in how transportation is funded. [00:06:10] And so a grant source became available and 1 of our railroads. Applied for a grant to attack this problem because you want the buses and the trains to be able to talk to each other in terms of how you pay for them. And so that’s how this project was formed and it was from the get go a collaboration between the project sponsor, the railroad, but also a steering committee of state agencies and other partners. [00:06:34] And at the time, I was in the mayor’s office in San Francisco, where we have multiple systems that go through San Francisco. Then after a while I got recruited to run the program. And Dan, [00:06:42] Jeff Wood: I’m curious if you could give us a bit of quick background on what you’re working on in Connecticut as well, because these items are going to cross over throughout the conversation. [00:06:50] Dan Baker: Certainly. At Connecticut DOT, we fund and oversee all of the public transportation services in the state of Connecticut. So we have three different rail service providers throughout the state. We are situated on the Northeast Corridor. We have a very active commuter rail line between New Haven, Connecticut and Manhattan. [00:07:07] We also have the C. T. rail Hartford line as well as C. T. rail shoreline east. And then, in addition to the rail service, we have a state owned bus service that’s branded as C. T. transit that serves 8 divisions throughout the state of Connecticut, the major cities, Hartford, New Haven, Stanford, as well as some other divisions, including our B. [00:07:26] R. T. system, C. T. fast track. But then, in addition to that, we have. 12 independent transit districts that we also fund and oversee and Jillian mentioned, in California, the number of agencies they have, we, we pay on comparison to that. But fortunately, here in Connecticut, we do work closely with all of these independent transit districts and we’ve made a concerted effort, especially through our customer experience action plan efforts that we released a CX action plan in 2023, we engaged every transit service provider through that action plan. [00:07:54] And so we’ve been working closely with them to advance statewide initiatives. 1 of the projects that we’re working on here in Connecticut is the Connecticut integrated transit mobility project and this is a U. S. D. O. T. smart grant funded project that we actually partnered with Jillian and on our grant application and they’ve been providing us with technical assistance and advising us along the way. [00:08:17] But really what we’re seeking to do is to pilot open loop payment technology on board buses here in Connecticut. It’s a very exciting project, and I’m happy to get into more details as we get into the conversation, but we’re doing a stage 1 pilot right now across 2 service providers. 1 of those being the independent trans district. [00:08:35] I mentioned river valley transit as well as our transit merit and division. Bus system, so we’re piloting the same validators for the same back end software with a multi operator fare cap across these 2 systems and we actually purchased the technology off of the California mobility marketplace. [00:08:52] Jeff Wood: That’s awesome. [00:08:53] So there’s a writer based user experience that you’re trying to create, but also like simplification for agencies and departments who are providing services as well. So I’m wondering if you can speak to that a little bit, because I think that’s an important part of the discussion, which is, we’re trying to make it easier for writers to ride, but also to make it easier for writers to ride, you need to have all the agencies on board and talking to each other as well. [00:09:13] Gillian Gillett: Yeah, that’s right. And I think it’s to some extent, it’s baked into the open payments model, which is defined by the banking model. So the banking model is called the four square model. And the idea is that you have the merchant and their bank and the customer and their bank and that they’re connected in a square. [00:09:30] By the network operators, which are Visa and MasterCard and JPB and so for the system to work, you need to have everybody represented and everybody have services that make the network stronger and, no gaps. At least in California, unlike. We don’t operate any transit, we’re the regulator, we’re a regulator, but we’re mostly a funder. [00:09:53] So our experience and relationships with the customer is removed. However, we as the DOT are able to fund research and development. And so what we are doing with the integrated mobility program is funding high quality commercial product grade research and development in order to inform purchases on behalf of the transit agencies. [00:10:21] The research and development that the transit industry can’t afford is coming out of the to make sure that consumer grade products are accessible to them. So that’s our relationship with the customer. It’s indirect, but mostly, our customers are their transit agencies. So absolutely simplifying the experience of using technology, new technologies, or even all technologies in particular to make them as seamless and concern free as possible for the merchants so that they can focus on their actual job, which is providing more service. [00:10:52] Dan Baker: So we were drawn to the model from the impact that they were seeking to have on the transit customer, and that was making transit as easy as paying for a cup of coffee. And because we are a small state geographically, but we’re the 4th most densely populated state and we have a patchwork of different services. [00:11:12] We are envisioning a future where, a customer can tap their debit or credit card across providers, not worry about having to research how to buy a fare. What does that fare cost? And just using what’s in their pocket and, being able to transfer seamlessly across service providers throughout our state. [00:11:31] So really enhancing, regional mobility for, residents and visitors in Connecticut. So that’s the future that we’re looking for and looking ahead to, and we think it’s achievable. [00:11:42] Jeff Wood: It’s interesting to think about the technical assistance side of this because I feel like there’s a lot of small agencies that like you alluded to, wouldn’t have the expertise or the money to put something together that is this kind of robust. [00:11:52] So I’m wondering about that process of getting agencies on board, but also what do the agencies need to be able to set up a process to accept payments in the ways that, make it easier for riders to ride. [00:12:02] Gillian Gillett: It’s a long answer. It’s a little bit complicated, but we do provide end to end technical assistance to agencies in California. [00:12:09] And you can see from our relationship with Dan that we try to provide as much assistance nationally as we can as well. And as we go, we try to make that. To put ourselves out of work as much as possible, right? If the technology is really hard to on board, then it’s too hard. So I can use the weight of the state of California to go to the vendors and say, look, you need to make this easier for the customers to use my customers or your customers. [00:12:32] Let’s is this necessary? Is that necessary? Boom boom. So we really focus on that piece. We have 2 58, I think is the most recent count. It changes on definitions of fixed rat service offerings in the state of California. I think it’s maybe 253 fixed operators. And then if you add the nonprofits that provide on demand and para transit, it’s up over, very close, if not over 800. [00:12:59] And many of them are so small that, a kid that like the general manager drives the bus. I’m probably not wrong in many of them. And some of them, the general manager probably still does the bus. So you don’t have a procurement officer. You don’t have an IT division. You don’t have a transportation planner. [00:13:15] Right? And you have people who are extraordinarily busy providing a lifeline service. They neither have that time, nor the expertise to do a lot of things that we’re increasingly asking them to do, right? There are transit buffs who say things like we just need the transit agencies to care about GTFS and their data. [00:13:38] And dude, the general manager drives the bus if it’s requires that kind of shaman or that kind of shamanic experience to make the data quality improve, then we’ve got either the wrong standard or the whole wrong process, right? We just have to figure out other ways to make this as easy for transit agencies as turning on a light switch. [00:13:58] So that’s taken some of which I already mentioned, right? You have to throw around your weight around with the vendors to increase the quality of their products, which requires recent development on their part for which there’s not much funding. So that’s a piece that the D O T can give, but also you need to get the trust of the agencies that although they can RFP and although, we’re not taking away their local control from them by no means, are we trying to bigfoot them or anything? [00:14:25] What we’re trying to say is that. There are probably more things that are standardized or could be standardized than you currently are aware of, right? Everybody uses an iPhone or everybody uses an Android. Let’s make more things in transit like that so that you don’t have to do all of these RFPs or cut and paste the RFP of your neighbor so that a lot of this just becomes much more out of the box like Lego. [00:14:49] And that’s really hard. [00:14:51] Jeff Wood: I see the Lego brick in your background. Yeah. [00:14:52] Gillian Gillett: Exactly. Like I bought that, so the last toy store in San Francisco went out of business and this was up there as one of their props store furnishings. And so I bought it and I haul it out in conversations and we’ll occasionally wave it at the screen. [00:15:05] Like Lego, make it too hard. [00:15:08] Jeff Wood: The history of Lego is really interesting and their marketing and how it’s now Lego, but it used to be Lego system, and the way that they were bricks and put together and all that stuff. And so that’s interesting in the context of what we’re talking about here. [00:15:19] Gillian Gillett: That’s right, and I think one of my favorite ways to answer questions like this and to remind people of is if you Google search for APTA footprint, American Public Transportation Association footprint, transit footprint, you’ll see the American transit industry. [00:15:32] There’s 3000 agencies, 928, I think, of which are the big urban systems and then the rest, right? We’re all small nonprofits. So the 928 agencies are called big, and that’s where all the money goes. That’s where the vendors go, right? They may have some excess capacity and mind you that there’s 1 agency, which is 60 percent of, somewhere between 50 percent and 60 percent of the entire US market. [00:15:58] And that’s New York, right? So 920 big has to be taken, the grain of salt. But so what happens is that. You get 928 agencies, each of whom are doing larger systems, all of which are custom because there’s no standards in transit other than GTFS and the remaining agencies get nothing. So Lego is a really important analogy for the way that you solve this kind of business problem, which is you say, okay, you need to make sure that as you’re driving standardization, that you find all the component parts such that nobody is providing a solution that is. [00:16:33] Too big so that everybody can have a piece of it. So the bigger guys get more Lego, the fewer guys, the smaller guys get. Fewer Lego, depending on their needs, but they’re all working in the same system so that the vendors can make enough money, and everyone is served and you can see this. Problem in every single layer of the technology stack of American transit, right? [00:16:58] Small agencies, until we started this work, didn’t have anything other than a cash fare box. They literally can’t accept anything other than exact change. All the big guys have, Super complicated back end offices and passes and transfers and all that sort of other stuff, right? And you will see that every, if you’re talking about automated passenger counting, there is no standardized automated passenger counting. [00:17:19] So small transit agencies count passengers by having the bus driver push the button on the automated fare box. [00:17:25] Jeff Wood: Click click. That’s why the marketplace is so interesting. You guys have signed contracts with payment processors, fare calculation, software providers, payment device providers, and even data providers like wireless companies at pre negotiated rates. [00:17:37] That’s really interesting that, you guys can start to pull all these technologies together and have a pre done contract so that basically any agency like in Connecticut can, glom onto this and get some benefits out of it. [00:17:51] Gillian Gillett: Ask Dan, that’s the principle, is it working? [00:17:54] I think so. Dan is running his agencies through it and hopefully we can, continue these discussions amongst our peers in order to make the marketplace better. And, I really want Dan to talk about this, but the concept, just so you know, the concept is not new. All we are doing is exercising. [00:18:10] Sort of a God card that the federal government and each state acting as a state have, which is only the federal government and states acting as states can purchase on behalf of others. Because there’s a acknowledgement that some political subdivisions are too small to be able to have a significant market share or the capacity to run a complex procurement. [00:18:31] So the federal government produces GSA schedules, general services administration schedules, many agencies use them for all stuff. They don’t have any transit. Products we’re working on that, but states themselves can have state purchasing schedules and that’s what the mobility marketplace is, right? Is the state purchasing schedules and we’re working with other states, including Connecticut to see if we can share the burden of this, but it’s an amazing opportunity. [00:18:59] It’s actually. A best practice, according to the FTA is procurement guide, but it’s almost never done or there’s just very little knowledge that this is what you do. Because, it’s relatively rare for states to act on behalf of local agencies like this. So there’s a lot of transit agencies that don’t understand that they can do this. [00:19:20] Jeff Wood: Dan, how did you all find out what California was doing and then decide that was the direction that you wanted to take? [00:19:26] Dan Baker: That’s a great question, and it honestly predated my time when I joined the Office of Transit and Ridesharing, so Jillian might even be able to have, more of a how we connected, but I would say, we knew that we wanted to pilot open payments in Connecticut, and when we identified, the U. [00:19:44] S. D. O. T. smart grant program that stands for strengthening mobility and revolutionizing transportation, we put an application, through that program for a stage 1 project, which we knew had an 18 month period of performance. So we were, in a way, forced to identify a quick procurement path to get. [00:20:04] The hardware and the back end software, procured and in Connecticut for us to then install them on buses, test them, deploy them to the general public, and then evaluate the success of our pilot. The mobility marketplace, we thought it was perfect for our use case, and, we’re starting small. [00:20:22] We have over. 800 fixed route buses in Connecticut over 400 paratransit vehicles that provide about 35, 000, 000 trips annually. So we’re starting we’re piloting only these validators about 5 percent of that fixed route fleet. So we’re definitely starting small. But what we’re doing is we. Ordered the devices and the fare calculation software from the mobility marketplace. [00:20:43] So we’re in the process right now working with those vendors and we’re looking at deploying these actually late September. So just about 4 weeks, 5 weeks from today. And so we’re in the middle of it, we’re identifying that. The vendors provide a lot of valuable support to us in the agencies as well. [00:21:02] In addition to working with them, they’ve done these deployments around the countries around the country with agencies of all sizes and what we’re seeing through the mobility marketplace is that it’s working for Connecticut and it’s allowing us to also build. Organizational capacity and on the side of how to navigate these contracts, how to work with these vendors, but also building it up at the agencies as well. [00:21:25] Working with the at the transit agencies where we’re deploying these, their vehicle maintenance staff, their finance folks, accessing all of the portals that come with these technologies and identifying these workflows and really, we’re excited to launch this a month from now. [00:21:41] But what we’re even excited more about is that next step, right? Taking what we’re learning through this pilot. And that was the whole spirit of the smart grant program. We’re fortunate to be eligible for a stage 2 grant application. We plan on developing that statewide rollout based on what we learned through this pilot. [00:21:58] Jeff Wood: The capacity building is always amazing to me because I feel like that’s a really important part that, we don’t talk about a lot. We talk about technology and stuff like that, but it’s really important. When I used to work for the center for T. O. D. we go to cities and hopefully help them figure out how to do stuff so that we didn’t have to come back. [00:22:12] The capacity building part was an important part of our mission. And I feel like that’s something that. It seems like it’s going really well for you all to get things going in different places without having to, like Jillian said, she wants to put herself out of business, right? [00:22:25] Gillian Gillett: Yes, and the capacity building also needs to happen on the private sector side. [00:22:29] One of the things that became abundantly clear to me as we started pushing, using state level agencies was how ignorant. The banking and payment sector, other than Visa and MasterCard, specific units of Visa and MasterCard that have done transit deployments before. How completely ignorant the banking and payment sector is of transit and vice versa, because we’ve not engaged with each other. [00:22:56] So lots of bankers have no idea how transit works and what its business needs are. Like, so the notion of transit being a merchant, Is a new idea for the private sector, let alone building merchant services for transit. So you have to build that capacity within the banks and within the banks and all of the providers along the way to understand, that both the opportunity and the needs of this merchant segment. [00:23:21] So it’s really a 2 way street. [00:23:23] Jeff Wood: That gets into the question I had about open loop payment systems too, is why are these so important to implement? What’s the thing about a card system that’s better than a fast pass or the clipper card or, anything along those lines that’s been used in the past, or the cash fare box for that matter? [00:23:37] Gillian Gillett: Ooh, my favorite subject. Thank you. So getting on my soapbox, what’s most important from a public policy perspective is making sure that everybody can participate in society. And that includes that everybody can transact. That everybody can, receive services and pay for services of their choice that doesn’t work in the United States because our social safety net doesn’t include the idea of an account. [00:24:04] It used to when I was a kid, used to be able to go to the bank to the post office and sign up for postal banking and that sort of stopped when I was super small and I’m not advocating for the post office to get into banking. However, the United States doesn’t regulate. Banks for consumers. So what I mean by that is in Europe and in other places, every bank is required to issue a basic account that has no minimum balance requirements, no fees, no overdraft fees, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so that everyone can receive and pay for services and stuff. [00:24:42] The United States doesn’t require that. So every bank here gets to decide its own minimum balance. Okay. And the fees that come along with guarding below your minimum balance and the fees that go along with your overdraft fees, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so that has the effect of locking about 30 percent of America out of the banking system. [00:25:04] So you have these underbanked, which is the biggest portion and unbanked consumers who rely therefore on cash and other alternative payment mechanisms. Okay, that means that we have an economic system or financial system that excludes 30 percent of the people and therefore excludes the merchants that support those people. [00:25:26] So some businesses are disproportionately in the cash business and efforts have been made to reduce that by like square. Square, all of a sudden, 10 years ago, like coffee shops and dry cleaners started spouting the little buttons so that now you can pay them, right? Those are small ticket vendors, but square was focused on the private sector. [00:25:44] In many ways, what we’re doing is what square did for small merchants. We’re doing that for transit, right? But like the financial system Transit is also a network play. So most people in America do pay by credit or debit. That is the payment method of choice in the United States, but because transit and its customers have been left behind, it winds up not participating in that. [00:26:06] And so two things happen. One is the longer we continue to issue closed loop stuff, ersatz accounts, rather than letting people have their own account and use that account by either bank account, the longer we ourselves are barriers to financial inclusion for our customers, but also the longer that we’re forced to build our own niche, non scalable boutique bespoke products that nobody else will use. [00:26:35] So the costs go up and the massive Delta between the consumer experience everywhere else in real retail and ours continues to increase. And we have to remember in our industry that from a policy perspective. There’s a hierarchy of policy outcomes, and I would say, getting America banked, everybody banked adequately is probably more important than public transportation at the end of the day. [00:26:58] People need to be able to receive and spend money, but we have to also remember that our real competition here is the car. I can give you a driver’s license in California. You can use it in Massachusetts. I can give you a blue placard in Massachusetts. You can use it in California. If I give you a discount on transit as the FTA requires at my agency, you can only use it at my agency, right? [00:27:16] Everything about the car is seamless except for traffic, right? You get in a car and it says, do you want to use your Apple airplay, right? Like none of that thinking and consumer experience applies in the transit sector. So it’s no surprise that people who have a choice. Don’t choose transit, right? 97 percent of Americans don’t even think about taking transit and we need to remember. [00:27:40] That’s the game. [00:27:42] Dan Baker: I think why open loop is important in Connecticut is right now. We do have a closed loop smart card. That’s called the go CT card, but it’s only available for CT transit services. So it’s not accepted on those independent transit districts that I talked about earlier. If we can. [00:27:58] Implement a payment standard that’s accepted everywhere. It unlocks that box. And it opens up so many more opportunities for people to travel across the state across providers. And we do have a fare capping policy in place through our go. C. T. card that we, we were 1 of the earlier agencies to introduce it in 2018. [00:28:19] And, we will be extending that fare capping policy through our open payment system. Looking at it from, that element, that’s important and something that we’ll be thinking about as we move forward. And 1 of my favorite comments that I got when we did public engagement on a statewide level in 2022, we got over 4000 comments. [00:28:36] Just we did 36 pop up events all across the state bus hubs, rail hubs, all over and somebody wrote in. And they said, I want to be paperless cashless. Cardless contactless and I just I thought it was a very, eloquent and succinct way of saying that. Hey, this is how I pay everywhere else. [00:28:57] And, how come I can’t pay like this on the bus. [00:29:00] Jeff Wood: How does that increase the difficulty of things to have those policies like fare capping, fares for school children, fares for veterans, all the different quote, unquote, benefits that folks get from different agencies here in California, I know that was one of the things that Clipper Guard was wrestling with was. [00:29:14] Which agencies provided which benefits and how do we put that in the system so it can update itself, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so I’m curious about those two and how those fit into the open loop system and whether it makes it harder or easier to do. [00:29:25] Gillian Gillett: A fare capping is actually super easy in the banking model. [00:29:29] Everybody needs to remember that the banking day closes at the end of the day. So the transactions are actually settled at the end of the day. It makes it super easy to aggregate transactions and implement fare capping. First of all, fare capping is the most equitable thing that you can do. It allows people who normally are paying the most per trip, which is poor people to get all of the benefits of a pass on the go as they pay for it. [00:29:54] And. You should focus on daily capping because those are your true customers who are probably taking your transit the most and who are currently paying the most fees. So technically, it’s super easy to implement on a bank card on the banking system. It’s really hard to implement in a custom fare payment system. [00:30:14] And if you’re trying to fare cap, all sorts of different fare prices, you’re going to miss. You’re actually going to confuse the customer more. So I would say that transit agencies need to remember that a pass is a paper based idea, as just as a ticket is. And if you’re going to go digital, you should do digital thinking. [00:30:37] The idea of a pass is, I want to give a discount. I want to reward my customers by reducing the price. You can replace every single pass with fare capping, right? Including a transfer is just a very short term fare cap, right? It’s like a 90 minute fare cap. So easier or simpler is better because it’s. [00:31:02] Easier to implement, but most importantly, it’s easier for the customer to understand my quibble with the Bay area living here has always been that like, between this operator and this operator, you can get a 25 percent discount, blah, blah, blah. And between this one, you can get a 45%. [00:31:16] Nobody cares. Honestly, the transit agencies need to understand that the audience for this is no, we have to get over ourselves. It just confuses the customer. It makes it impossible for the customer to know in advance. What their trip is going to cost if that trip involves multiple legs, right? [00:31:33] It’s the same thing with benefits, right? If you say, in Berg X, I want to make seniors feel really welcome. And therefore, I’m going to reduce the age of seniors from 65 to 55. But seniors are traveling across your district into the next 1, which defines seniors as 63. what the hell is the price going to be like this? [00:31:52] There’s no way for the senior to know. So complexity is bad. Retail is that’s why everything is, 4. 99 cents, right? Make it as simple as possible. And if you want to provide discounts, then follow retail rules. [00:32:07] Dan Baker: 1 of the initiatives and efforts that we kicked off last year was a statewide unified fare project. [00:32:13] What we did was we took a holistic view of all of the different past types and fare products that are in the ecosystem here in Connecticut across, transit services. And then the transit districts in our state, we convene the working group with 5 GM’s at those transit districts. [00:32:30] D. O. T. Staff here and C. T. Transit staff and just the goal was to what can we do to simplify this for the customer and also, on the agency as well. So make this simpler. What we realized was we weren’t that far apart. We really weren’t. We were very close, but we were a little off in certain spots. [00:32:49] We offer a 2 hour pass at C. T. Transit. Others offer 90 minute passes. Some offer one ways. So how nice would it be if we just all offer the same time based short period pass, we really weren’t far off on our day passes in the cost of our day passes. Really? The biggest spread is in the total cost of monthly passes and, that even introduced a different element to some offer calendar month. [00:33:11] Others offer 31 day rolling we do at transit and some offer 30 days. We’re wrapping up that study shortly, this year, and we’re identifying some near term policy changes that we hope that we can get all of the districts to move towards. And. Some longer term changes that will set us up for success when we look to do a statewide open payment technology rollout, because if everyone’s playing by the same rules of the agency side, we can set up that system a lot easier. [00:33:36] And what that does is it simplifies it for the customer. And that’s really that’s our number 1 goal. [00:33:41] Gillian Gillett: Yeah. And if I may, there’s 2 things that I want to say. Technically 1 is. In California, at least, and it may also be national gas stations are required to put up those big signs in front of gas stations that publish from a driving distance. [00:33:56] The price for gallon. Everybody knows what the price of a gallon of gas is and everybody more or less. Knows what the price of a gallon of milk is. Nobody has a clue what the price of a transit trip is until we can bat at that level, we are never going to make it right. That’s the first thing that I’ll say is that’s your competition. [00:34:17] Think about that. The second thing that I’ll say is. We need to understand service design. So the concept of service design is that there’s a front of stage and there’s a back of stage. If you go to the theater, people come to see what’s in front of the stage. They don’t want to see what’s behind stage unless it’s stomp or something like that, where you’re playing on this idea and trying to break down the third wall, right? [00:34:40] Nobody wants to know about all the crap backstage. They just want to see, the play similarly at a restaurant, unless you’re Wolfgang Puck, nobody wants to know what’s happening in the back of the kitchen. They just want their dinner, right? It doesn’t mean that both of those worlds don’t exist. [00:34:56] It’s absolutely important. The backstage works well. And that everybody who’s working in it feels. A meaningful role and that their workflows work. It’s just different from what happens in front stage and in transit, we confuse the two and we make the customer go through a lot of hoops that have everything to do with backstage and not front stage. [00:35:16] And that’s not a pleasant customer experience. And it also is not a recipe for success. [00:35:21] Jeff Wood: It makes me think about the onboarding process for a new transit rider too. So I think about my experiences going to different countries and I just flashed up a bunch of cards because here I have all these transit cards from different places, right? [00:35:34] There’s a oyster card, an Orca card, everything else. And I’m like so when you get off of the airplane or the train, you have to go and go to a kiosk and you have to pay. Purchase one of these cards and maybe they’ll charge you 5 to actually have the card and then maybe they’ll charge you like a 20 minimum fee and then I always remember all these tourists just standing there with their hands on their heads. [00:35:55] Like what? How do I do this? What am I supposed to do? And I feel like this is like the experience that writers have every day, right? It’s awful trying to get on and it’s horrible. [00:36:04] Gillian Gillett: Yeah, that’s right. It is horrible. And you’re making them the vast majority of people. Bow to your rule. No, we won’t accept your money. [00:36:13] We are more important than you are. You have to come to our machine, which is often broken and inscrutable to use and doesn’t have consumer grade customer research behind it in order to allow us to accept your money, and then you have to bank your money on that card, which is a huge equity problem, right? [00:36:29] I can’t feed my, I can’t buy milk with the money on my Clipper card. Who’s more important here? And we make a lot of, yammer a lot about equity, right? So that’s an ultimate inequity. I think it is our investment that we’re requiring our writers to make. The other thing that I’ll say is I have a bone to pick with Apple and Google who are taking the current Dysfunction and putting it in the digital level, which is okay. [00:36:55] All the mess that’s in your wallet or in the wallet of a poor person who doesn’t just have multiple transit cards, right? They’ll have a card for parks, a card for everything. We’re not we’re giving them all these cards rather than what they really need, which is their own account, a debit account. Right? [00:37:11] And instead, we’re giving them all this stuff. Now, we’re Google and Apple are making it available in your wallet. So I don’t know if you’ve looked at your digital wallet, right? But mine is full of now of all these transit cards. So anytime I go somewhere new, I have to remember which one to, Oh, I have to change my transit express card because today I’m going through this card services, right? [00:37:32] Okay, it works fine. You’ve done an integration. You’ve made it feel like it’s seamless, but it’s not. [00:37:39] Jeff Wood: It’s the same problem as this, right? It’s just so many cards and then I forget to take it with me when I go the next time. [00:37:46] Gillian Gillett: Here’s the thing that bothers me as a D O T is Apple and Google are not going to pay for those integrations for the small agencies, right? [00:37:54] I believe. You have to ask the Bay Area and tap to confirm, but I’m pretty sure that Apple paid for the integration between the clipper card and the wallet and that Apple paid for the integration between the tap card in the wallet, because those are big, sexy service areas. Are they going to pay for. [00:38:11] Whatever the hell small agency or that’s card, or maybe the small agency doesn’t have a card, right? How are all of the transit agencies going to exist in that wallet? Unless they get really big, it can afford an ersatz card. It doesn’t work. It’s not fare. [00:38:27] Jeff Wood: Dan, when you got those 4, 000 comments, what were some other interesting comments that you got that maybe didn’t stand out? [00:38:32] Because I’m thinking about onboarding and how people ride transit and those types of things. And I imagine there was something in there related to, people just having a hard time getting on the bus. [00:38:41] Dan Baker: Yeah, so we asked questions, basically on 7 different segments of the customer journey. So we had questions that had to do with how did you plan your trip? [00:38:51] What was your experience at the station and stop level? What was your experience, navigating? Schedule and frequency, was it sufficient for what you needed for it for your travel? What was the onboard experience? What was your boarding and exiting experience? And what was your fare payment experience? [00:39:07] So we went across the broad spectrum of, when a customer decides to even take a transit trip. And the lowest ranking scores from the survey were stations and stops, but specifically bus stops. And there was a big desire from transit customers to see more amenities and improved bus stops. [00:39:25] 1 of the things that we’re proud of here, Connecticut is we have a bus stop enhancement program and the works that’s dedicating 20Million dollars or up to 20Million in funding to improve various amenities at bus stops. Putting in new shelters where the shelters are, very old or vandalized, or there’s no shelter at all, looking at accessibility at these stops, lighting, real time signage as well. [00:39:47] That, that was definitely a big thing, but at the end of the day, people focused on service. When they were looking for investments to be made, they wanted to see increased frequencies. So that definitely rose to the top, above, any other part. And interestingly we were administering the survey during a period of fare free. [00:40:04] From April 1st, 2022 to April 1st, 2023, we were 0 fare statewide that was subsidized with code. Relief funding, so that was a very interesting time, to do a survey and ask about people’s perspective on fares. But nevertheless, people still wanted to see improvements on how we collect fares and ways that we are offering, different fare payment methods. [00:40:27] So this is something that we go back to a lot of times just to help us recenter on what we’re actually focusing on here across the Bureau. [00:40:35] Jeff Wood: This reminds me of the discussion that Jillian was just having about front stage backstage too, because of the data that goes into the customer experience as well, because that makes me think of GTFS and, the operational data standard and the things that make it helpful for people to see that their service is there, like mapping and things like that, but also. [00:40:52] What the agencies get out of it too. [00:40:55] Gillian Gillett: Yeah, that’s right. I’m pretty passionate about payments, but most of what we do in integrated mobility is really focused on GTFS and the data that both customers and transit agencies need. So GTFS was the only standard that we could find when we first started. [00:41:09] And so we’re really leaning into it, helping the transit agencies publish. High quality and we’ve pretty much got all the transit agencies there, right? There were ultimately a few tiny agencies. And now we’ve helped them do that. And we’ve discovered in the process that is too hard, right? Currently, a lot of small transit agencies, they still schedule on paper or in Excel. [00:41:31] And that’s a pain. It’s hard to schedule. And so they don’t update their schedules very frequently necessarily. Or if they don’t publish that they’ve changed it. And then to go from a schedule that’s in Excel to then having to rebuild the schedule in this weird data format called GTFS is too hard, right? [00:41:51] It means you have 2 things to do that are the same thing, but they’re not automatic. So what we’re doing in California is we’re going to give the small and rural agencies for whom the DOT is fiduciary, we’re going to give them Remix on a trial basis, and then we’re going to help them put their schedules into Remix and Remix, we’ve been working with them, they’ve now adopted the canonical GTFS validator. [00:42:15] They run the feeds through that before they publish them. If you publish your schedule in Remix, it poops it out. In gtfs format automatically, so you don’t have to do 2 things anymore and that allows us to then build on that, which is okay. If you have a clean, correct gtfs feed, you are now eligible or ready for real time. [00:42:35] Right schedule plus some hardware and additional purchase of software, which is our next product that we’re putting in the mobility marketplace. Hopefully in October, we’ll allow you to produce. Thanks. Clean, reliable, GTFS real time, and once you have GTFS real time, once that’s stable, we can then move forward to productizing something that we’re researching now, which is real time consuming digital signage, right? [00:43:02] That should be standardized as well. I have no, like every single transit sign in the country is custom. There’s no standards, right? So Google and Apple has spent a lot of time creating the UI as of transit app of what a transit trip should look like, right? So consumers are really used to that. Now, the question is, how do you do that same level of consumer research and put it on digital signage, right? [00:43:30] And say, okay, at this location, what real time information does the passenger need to actually make a good decision? What is that and nothing else. That’s the research that we now have to do. And when we combine that with standardized hardware, we should be able to massively drop the cost of digital signage such that even, rural agencies can have a minimum, digital sign on a pole on the sides of the road. [00:43:56] Right? And the DOTs have a tremendous role in this, because at least in California, we probably have less to 2000 bus stops that are on the state highway network. So it’s very much in our interest to make those standardized, right? So that we can incorporate them, start to create an MUTCD for transit. [00:44:16] Jeff Wood: It feels like there’s so many of these things. When I was digging through your website, there was like a discussion about how to use satellite to figure out the rural agencies, how they could use those on their buses to, connect into the system because cellular doesn’t work. Go everywhere for them. [00:44:31] So all the technology stuff mixes together and such that you can actually have it uniform for everybody [00:44:37] Gillian Gillett: Yeah, no, that’s right. I mean it blew my mind that in the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the world ever We have All sorts of large areas that have no connection to the Internet, or really poor connection to the Internet. [00:44:52] How can this be the idea that we’re having to solve this for transit is asinine to me, but okay, we’ll do it. I think the. Lemonade that gets made out of those lemons is, if we succeed, people can, watch a bus bike go by in California and know that, oh, there’s the internet, right? [00:45:09] There’s a reliable source of connectivity. That’d be amazing. So it means we have to go do deals with Elon Musk, but [00:45:17] Jeff Wood: I saw that I wasn’t going to mention it, but you all found that Starlink was It’s [00:45:21] Gillian Gillett: great. It’s, it blows. The traditional telecoms out of the water, you can see our report. It’s incredible how reliable the data is. [00:45:31] Jeff Wood: Dan, I wonder what’s the next step for you all. What’s coming up next in terms of the process of getting to that second stage and funding and moving forward and getting, everything standardized in the state. [00:45:41] Dan Baker: Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, we are. Piloting this late September, so we’re gonna be introducing it to revenue service. [00:45:48] Our implementation report to U-S-D-O-T is due in March of 2025, so little over six months from today. So really what we’re doing is, we’re identifying some. And things that we can point to it for success of the pilot and working closely with our service providers on existing data that we have, pre implementation of these validators. [00:46:08] And then, if we notice any improvements, maybe some decreased dwell time. At certain busy stops, looking at some customer satisfaction, we’re doing a customer survey currently that’s open, asking people like, what’s their current preference and their current practice of purchasing fares? [00:46:22] And what would they like to do in the future? And then what’s their perception on open payments? And, so we’re going to be getting some interesting, feedback and results from that. And then we’re, Planning on doing a survey while the validators are on the bus is probably, a couple months after to see, how people’s experience using this. [00:46:38] And 1 of the things that I didn’t mention that we did earlier back in March was an operator focus group and that was a lot of fun to introduce this technology to the drivers and, get their feedback at their opinion on what’s working well or not. Currently, when it comes to fares. [00:46:55] for joining us. And 1 of the things that they were most excited about, which, we are looking forward to identifying how we can, link reduced fare benefits to individuals bank cards. And that’s something that we’re exploring. We’re working closely with, some of the players in the space that work closely with Calitp, but that was probably the single most thing that driver set to us. [00:47:16] If they can be removed from the verification process. And that benefit is just automatically linked to that card. And someone just taps and just takes a seat that would make their lives so much better. And the other thing was on transfers. So if they could stop explaining the transfer rules to people who were coming over from, a different system and why that they’re not going to accept their past because we have two different fare boxes on the buses, they would love the seamlessness of open payments. [00:47:42] So that was exciting. We’re in the thick of it right now. And our team will be busy, evaluating the pilot and then coming up with do we have to tweak anything in our approach for stage 2? What are the things that we’re gonna, maybe think about as we take this to a statewide level? [00:47:57] And I think really what that introduces, it’s the policy questions. And I think that’s some of the bigger things that we need to tackle, over the next, 6 to 12 months is Lining us up on the fare policy side across all the providers, so that we’re in a, playing on the same ball field in terms of our fare rules and our fare structure. [00:48:13] I think that’s on the horizon, but for us, like I said, our report is due early next year to us. And, we plan on submitting for a stage 2 grant application next year. I do want to plug and thank, for, for the smart grant, because it’s allowed us to test this out, show the proof of concept and, we’re trying something ambitious, but we’re on a good path. [00:48:33] We’re in the transit innovation project group for all the smart grant recipients. So we’re with some cool other projects that are doing some neat things. We’re excited here in Connecticut. That’s awesome. [00:48:42] Jeff Wood: And Jillian, since we last talked in 2019, I’m wondering if there’s anything from this process or the work that you’ve done that has surprised you, obviously there’s lots of surprises that jump up when you’re digging into the weeds, but [00:48:53] Gillian Gillett: yeah, it’s a great question. [00:48:55] One, so there’s two things that Dan doesn’t have yet that fall into that category. One is. And I’ll offer it to him here today is that all the agencies that work with us have been sharing their data with us. So we get their transaction post process transaction data, which doesn’t have any PII in it. [00:49:17] Right? There’s no personally identifiable information in what we get. We just get here’s the transaction that happened this amount this time. But then we also they’re sharing their invoices from the banks. With us. One of the first things that we did to make all of this possible was we, as the state of California, negotiated a preferential rate for transit so that transit shouldn’t be paying the same amount of fees as a retailer does, right? [00:49:44] Because we’re providing a public service. So we got the lowest rate in the country, which we’re sharing with our colleagues that participate. And so I was surprised to see how much the invoices change from month to month and that the banking industry isn’t as Sophisticated as we thought they were like, they’ll make mistakes every month in the invoice. [00:50:03] So we continue to save our merchants money by finding those and making the banks fix them and reimburse the agencies. And also working with them. This is part of that merchant services comment that I made before. Is that if you’re really going to engage with us as merchants. Here’s the rules. [00:50:18] We need to understand these things, right? We need to be able to break down all of the fees because we’re subject to transparency and public sunshine, which we welcome. So that was shocking to learn even well, how rickety the banking system in the United States is compared to other places, right? [00:50:36] Like we are really behind other countries have real time payments. And have real time banking and we don’t, right? Banks here still can clear your checks and, 12 percent like that’s ludicrous in a modern society. So that was surprising. The other thing that’s been surprising is this work that we’ve been doing this marooned in California, but I’m hoping working with Dan and with us. [00:50:57] Maybe if he’ll make comments in his March report to USDA, which he’s supporting it. Is that. The federal government, the FTA, requires transit agencies to offer these discounts as an equity move, so seniors seniors, persons with disabilities, outside of the ADA, Medicare card holders, I think that’s, and then a lot of agencies provide discounts to veterans, they require that discount, but they offer no way to do it. [00:51:23] Which forces all of the agencies to do their own eligibility verification, right? And it was really shocking to see how different that process is across agencies and how humiliating it is both to the customer and to the customer service officer who’s trying to do that. So we built software, we do two things. [00:51:44] One is working with our department of technology. We entered into a contract with login. gov, which is part of the general services administration to tap. They’re the single sign on for the federal government. So with a contract with them, we can get a digital confirmation of whether or not somebody is eligible online. [00:52:05] So agencies in California that work with us. Have that so now our agencies can offer sign up once digitally senior discounts. And veterans discounts were like weeks away from EBT in California. And then we’re working our way towards Medicare. So that’s because of a relationship between the department of California and login. [00:52:28] gov. And that’s coupled with a piece of software that we wrote together that takes that confirmation and sends it over to the transit agencies merchant so that the benefit is delivered every time. So as more agencies in California do this, The customer can simply opt in if they’ve gotten a senior discount on Monterey Salinas They don’t have to get a new one on Santa Cruz if Santa Cruz chooses to go with us So it was shocking that it was so simple to get it going in, California It was like, oh we just have to pick up the phone and call login back up. [00:53:02] What’s also shocking is how difficult it is To get the FDA or us to show any leadership on this idea. I think that they think of themselves as funding entities, which they are, but at the same time, nobody has the gift that transit has, which is the remaining population that we disproportionately serves. [00:53:28] Isn’t well served, doesn’t trust government and transit is in a position to restore that trust using the trust that it already has and help deliver benefits. And once the customer is part of the system, you can add to that. Nobody but transit can do that. And I just wish that we could figure out a way to make FTA and USDOT or somebody in the federal government besides login. [00:53:52] gov to see that. So that we can give Dan what we have in California. Like it doesn’t make any sense for login. gov to have 50 contracts, right? It’s unnecessary. The FTA already has contracts with transit agencies. The FTA knows who are transit agencies cause they get their money from the FTA. But why can’t the FTA ask login. [00:54:10] gov to just do this nationally? [00:54:12] Jeff Wood: This is something that we chatted with Ron Brooks about back in November of last year, and he works with paratransit and, trying to figure out who can ride paratransit, they have to get approved to be able to ride paratransit. And so when he goes to a different city, It’s a crapshoot about whether you can ride the paratransit there or not with, if you’re disabled. [00:54:29] And so that type of thing is something that if you connected all the dots, like you’re trying to do, that would make a huge world of difference for these folks who really don’t need any more stress when it comes to thinking about how they get places. [00:54:41] Gillian Gillett: That’s right, and the very minimum we could do is to say, okay, a huge chunk of them can take fixed route a lot of the time and simply need to get their discount to do that. [00:54:49] Let’s at least make that piece easy. And that’s what’s in the FTA requirements. The additional verification that’s required for paratransit is a solvable problem, right? But, it’s not creating that database. That’s harder, right? There would have to be some more, there is no database of persons with disabilities. [00:55:11] However, if you do what we’re doing, which is make sure that you have all the Medicare card holders, all the veterans, all the seniors all the people who get EBT, a lot of those persons, those people also have disabilities. And so we will hopefully be 85 percent of the way there. [00:55:28] Like at the time. Is now it was during COVID and we have to learn that lesson, right? That like my neighbors across the street were the first people I knew who lost their jobs post COVID. They also were some of the people who needed the Trump checks the most. But they were unbanked. So it took us, I was helping them pay their rent. [00:55:49] It took us four months to figure out how to even apply for their Trump checks. Meanwhile, I got the 1, 400 the next day, direct deposit in my bank account, because I have a direct deposit relationship with the IRS. I don’t need it. I didn’t need the 1, 400 bucks. By the time we finally figured out who would apply for theirs, they sent the application in, they got the check. [00:56:10] They tried it immediately down the street on Mission Street and cashed their check, and they paid 400 to do so 400 of fees on 1, 400 because we can’t figure this out, or we refuse to figure these problems out. It’s just, it’s not only, I’m not a bleeding heart liberal, I’m liberal, but this is just simply bad business and inefficiency the way we do it. [00:56:32] Yeah. I complain a lot and tried to set up some plumbing, but Dan is actually doing it. [00:56:37] Jeff Wood: Yeah. [00:56:37] Gillian Gillett: Connecticut’s doing it and I hope more states and local agencies do it. [00:56:41] Jeff Wood: So Dan, where can folks find out more about what you all are doing or ask you questions if they’re thinking about doing the same thing? [00:56:46] Dan Baker: My email address is daniel. baker at ct. gov. So honestly reach out directly to me via email. You can also search tap and ride CT. We have a project web page that we’re building out right now. On our Connecticut DOT website, so that will, have more information posted to that as we, introduce the validators into service, later next month and continue our reporting. [00:57:10] So those are two ways you can get in touch. Definitely happy to talk with people about this. Jillian, where can folks [00:57:15] Jeff Wood: find out what you’re up to at Cal ITP? [00:57:17] Gillian Gillett: So you can reach me personally at Jillian dot Gillette, at.do ca.gov, but also you can just go to [email protected]. Emails to me will get routed. Or you can just look at the California ca mobility marketplace.org CR product program. [00:57:35] Jeff Wood: Yeah. And there’s a lot of research on there. There’s a lot of background information. There’s a lot of detail too. So if you want to just dive in first before asking questions, feel free to do that too. There’s a lot of really cool stuff on there, so I hope folks get a chance to check it out. [00:57:45] Gillian Gillett: Thank you. [00:57:46] Jeff Wood: Dan and Jillian. Thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate your time. Thanks Jeff. This was a lot of fun. [00:57:51] Gillian Gillett: Yeah, thanks.
