Transit Tech: Payment and Benefits Innovation

all right let's get started hi everyone I'm Jin welcome to the MIT Mobility Forum organized by the MIT mobile initiative uh today we have a very specific topic focusing on the transit technology on the payment and benefit Innovation I really thank Dr Anon Stewart the deputy director of the MIT Transit lab for helping design and moderate today's session I also thank Rose Miller I shabi Lady shop to join us as the panelist right our I invite to answer to moderate session but just to motivate today discussion uh interal payment system we will think we should have solved the problem long time ago right from cash check credit card Mobile payment QR code facial recognition fingerprint we have all sort of Technology right but of course if we use public transit you will know that in many cities we don't we haven't solved that problem so it's a Technology Innovation issue is the industry Monopoly issue how the ticket technology also constraint Our Fair product a fair constraint that it needed to enable so in short what if we don't have to think about paying when we use public transit right so just to warm up the audience in the chat I will invite everybody to type your organization City and the local timeing as we before right uh so I will do MIT Cambridge uh 12 now but in addition I invite everybody to typee in the transit card name in your city right so for me I will see Charlie Card MBTA got a pretty wide range of uh Transit card brands there's a certain subset of us I think who may be collectors here and who may be uh reaching out to people for a few of the rarer ones indeed yeah so let me pass the for to Dr anen Stewart as a great thank thanks a lot chinma and thanks everyone for joining today um this is the first of what I hope will be kind of an ongoing regular Series in the MIT Mobility Forum on Transit Tech and we've decided to start today with something that can be um in some ways literally a barrier to entry for people in terms of Transit uh so we've got a great panel here to talk about some recent Innovations in transit payment uh technology and also how we connect that to benefits either kind of societal benefits or um more more limited employer provided benefits um so I'll have the panel jump right in our first panelist uh is Lily shout who is the man a managing director at Rebel group um works with a number of of colleagues I think who have uh worked in say places like London where the MIT Transit lab also has extensive experience going back to 2012 uh with the launch of contactless payment there just check the latest stats uh contactless payment now uh over 3 million Journeys a day in London uh anyways Lily has also had a range othera experiences in the public and private sectors including at usdot Lyft and Nelson niggard and is going to talk us through a little bit on some of the latest that's been going on especially in California go ahead Lily yeah thanks for the invitation to join you all today and really looking forward to the discussion and the opportunity to share the virtual stage with two my favorites in space aval and Ruth so thanks very much for the warm warm welcome um as mentioned my name is Lily sha I am a director at Rebel um my team of about 25 uh folks around the world has a background and experience uh in public transit systems and specifically around Fair payments so all the ways that people pay for accessing the bus or the train um as mentioned my background and many of the folks I uh colleagues I have and folks on my team uh have worked both in the public and private sector side um in Mobility Services and also in uh uh Mobility uh Technologies as well uh Rebel is based in rdam where I'm joining you from today um and excited to bring that Global Perspective to this conversation since how people pay for the bus or train is relevant all around the world one of my favorite projects that I've worked on throughout my career is uh for the past four years supporting the California integrated travel project or Cal ITP um Cal ITP is an initiative at the state level in California by Cal Trans along with Rail and Transit operators in the state um to bring together the the collective um uh ability of public transit and rail across the state with three main initiatives so first is to simplify the way that people can pay uh for accessing transit services um bringing real-time data standards and Transit uh information to passengers as they're trying to navigate the system um and then improving the experience of qualifying for and then receiving your discounts uh that you may be eligible for for when you ride public transit in California ultimately the goal for the California integrated travel project or CP is using mobility and access to opportunities in your community to uh increase social inclusion and equity and affordability so by allowing people an easier option for paying for mobility and the opportunity to try it for paying your a dollar or $2 bus or train Fair um you can build the habit of using digital payments for paying for everyday items um then sort of moving up the ladder you can increase the ability for somebody to receive benefits um by proving that they are for example a senior or a veteran using those benefits to then get rewarded for taking sustainable travel options and from there building more credit and Trust through financial inclusion being recognized in the financial ecosystem so as somebody like me who has worked their whole career in the mobility and Transit space it is a really eye-opening way of viewing the opportunities that public transit can unlock not just the access to opportunities in communities but the financial um inclusion ways for paying and getting um actually able to pay for those uh opportunities that you might be uh not able to afford today so in that first bucket of making P Transit as easy as buying a cup of coffee uh the state of California has said that the uh State role in this space can be uh facilitating the purchasing of fair payments uh systems for Transit so the state of California has pre- purchased or set up a state purchasing schedule for the hardware and software needed to begin accepting bank cards or open loop payments on Transit and rail across the state these contracts set up at the state level are available to any Transit Agency across the us so you do not need to be located in California to be able to take advantage of them um and then in addition the state is providing technical assistance and resources to be able to access those contracts so these are resources available to help Transit agencies um more quickly be able to start accepting open loop payments or bank cards on their system without having to go through a multi-year procurement or developing um uh customized design specifications or any of the other sort of fair payment Fair collection system processes that many agencies have really struggled with in the US um beyond that uh we recognize and the state is uh very concerned about ensuring that everyone has a way to pay for the system so not just making sure that there are validators on board buses and trains but that everyone who's interested in paying with something other than cash has an option to do so um so the state has been working with uh Bank and Credit Unions uh the bankon Coalition and other issuers to make sure that there are options for folks who are interested in a digital payment option but may not currently have one in addition we working with folks like LA Metro we've been looking at using prepaid debit cards and other digital payment tools to actually distribute government benefits for Mobility so in addition to making sure that everybody has a way to pay um in some instances having money on that is also a barrier so the state has been working towards um using digital tools for financial inclusion in that way as well uh finally I wanted to just speak quickly to the last component which is Transit discounts so many folks in the US uh are eligible for a discounted fair when they board their bus or train and today the process for getting that discount can be very complicated and cumbersome for many writers um many Transit agencies in the US uh require a rider to show up in person to a customer service center present things like a doctor's note or a um a tax return to prove their income um and those tool and those those information are then scanned and then held by the Transit Agency so it's a a cumbersome process for Riders to have to go through it can also be a huge barrier for Transit agencies to manage all of that data and keep it secure so the state of California working with the California Department of Technology as well as login.gov at the federal level has been working on a seamless automated system that can be an additional option for Transit agencies to allow Riders to qualify for those discounts more seamlessly the CP benefits client uh uses a Federated identity system uh to attach a discount for example that you are a senior over 65 to a bank card or credit card that allows Riders to receive that discount anywhere or any time they tap that card uh in the state of California so it allows a rider to be able to receive that discount uh in different Transit agencies that are each you know have their own requirements but that the rider can then use the same credential they used to pay for transit services to pay for anything else so these are just a couple of the Innovations from the state of California I wanted to highlight today I will say that you can reach the Cal ITP program at any time at hello cp.org um also would recommend signing up for the mailing list uh where every two weeks we send out information about Transit Technology Innovation and payments um so definitely another resource to look up there and with that I will pass the Baton to my next panelist great thanks so much Lily well obvious getting the screen share up uh just one reaction that I think in a lot of debates we've seen about kind of subsidies for Transit Rider subsidies for Transit there's been this idea of should it be place-based or person-based for example in Boston a number of routes have been piloted as free routes is that the best from an equity perspective and I think sometimes the argument has been uh you know not only is it a cumbersome process for someone to sign up for a benefit but that can actually be a pretty undignified thing and so maybe some of the technology you're showing here offers a way to kind of break that um where people don't need to go through that cumbersome process and may open up new ways to think about person-based uh subsidies or discounts so something to keep in mind definitely and actually an excellent segue to Avital uh who's thinking about just those things great so ja shavit is uh senior director at La Metro's office of innovation um has been working on a range of projects across LA County with LA Metro for uh 17 years I think and we actually uh overlapped briefly at LA Metro uh just over 10 years ago so looking forward to hearing the latest uh from La thanks everyone um and thanks Lily for that great kind of overview um I'm gonna since we have a short short time to give a presentation I'm going to just give two two things why why I'm passionate and interested in this subject um of payments and access um to our transportation systems um number one there's a big event that's coming in four less than four years to Los Angeles which is the 2028 Olympics and um on the leand side um in 1984 my sister went to the Olympics with my dad and left me behind I was I was a little young um so I want to make sure for the 2028 Olympics that everybody has great access to the Olympics not only the spectators but also the people that do get left behind right because they're too young or their mom's caring for their kids um as it was my my mom in my my case right that everybody has access to Great Transportation that's something that motivates me and I want to go to the Olympics maybe I'll time um and you know this is actually a picture from last night I went to a passing artart Center which is a really fine um uh design thinking uh policy uh school they have a really great graduate school in in um transportation design studies which I'll plug um that we've we've uh recruited a few students from to come work with us at Metro and this is the the perception from the students of our Transit Fair system not mine not mine um full disclosure but that may be our current access system that we currently have in place which is called tap um which is a closed loop QR uh RFID Card uh maybe doesn't serve everybody in the right way um maybe just based upon this the students's perception of that we are techno benevolence right that wasn't the greatest word but um but just a thought um so what are we doing about that um one of the really cool projects that I and my team are working on um really with inspiration from Lily um Lily and and uh kp's work on payments um and kind of connecting them to our existing kind of banking rails and using existing banking technology not Reinventing the wheel using the technology that's right in front of us um which is our payment system to give more people access to transportation in a more Equitable seamless and maybe more dignified way giving them more Choice um particularly when it comes to subsidies for low-income individuals um so what we did um and we're actually in going into our um about to go into our 12th we're in our 12th month of a 12 month uh Phase One Pilot where we gave a thousand people in South La $150 on a prepaid debit card for a year um so $1,800 and these individuals were all low income and all qualify for existing low fairs Easy Life program that's our sub our subsidy program and they got a card which they could use on eight different transportation services and they could pick how they use that budget right we're not saying you have to use it for a bike or and it has to be an ebike or you have to use it on EV car sharing or you have to use it for public transit they get to have that choice so they can serve their transportation unique Transportation needs um when they need it um and so you know people are like what can you use the card for so the the beauty of this is we use the exist banking rails we're not inventing new technology we're really just using the the technology that that exists within the payment networks that we use for our um airline miles right and our Costco cards um so this card was limited to eight Merchant category codes rhing taxi public Bus and Rail commuter rail Amtrak inner city bus car share car rental EV car share the city of Los Angeles has and this project I should I should not skim over this is in partnership with the city of Los Angeles they got a really um generous Grant from the state of California from the California air resources board um this project and this this pilot of a a Mobility wallet is part of a greater Universal basic Mobility project that the city of La is running that includes many other components um it also include bike shops which which is something that I'm really interested because I used to work in kind of the active Transportation sphere and this idea that you can give somebody subsidies on a card and they can go to any bike shop uh really anywhere potentially in the world but we limited it to the United States um and use the prepaid debit card to buy a bike or buy a helmet or buy a lock right to help them get around and we actually saw a lot of people using it not surprisingly we actually saw more people using it at bike shops than on than on shared or equivalent to about uh at bike shops than shared scooters and we actually saw more people using at bike shops making purchases at bike shops than on Bike Share um so that's kind of interesting from my maybe an equity standpoint um so you know I don't think I Lily kind of touched on the why we do this but really getting ready for the future technology of open loop but also um wanting to look at how we might provide a one access point one card right to rule them all um and how we might kind of create a wallet that maybe is a replacement for a personal Auto or maybe enables people to not have to get purchase additional car um we also in LA County um we have some of the highest rates of cash cash usage on our transit system um about 40% more than 40% of boardings are cash um and that's probably because we have a large percentage of the population that rides Transit that's that's low income or very low income and being having to lock up funds on a closed loop card is actually even more kind of financially constraining from them and we ask people why don't you use a tap card they say it's because I don't have the liquid to put on that card and lock it up right so that's another reason why why use a Mobility wallet why look to different technology that's more flexible for people to spend um you know since we're mirroring the end of this first phase we're looking to do a phase two starting this summer because we have another generous Grant um from the state of California and from from our our regional planning organization Scag um and we also maybe even have a phase three um in partnership with calr looking at how we might connect it to the highway system I think that's a question we'll talk more about um but we're really you know seeing uh you know you know a little over half of the trips purchased are still on public transit um but you know about you know uh 40% of the trips are purchased on ride healing services or taxi and also access Services um and then we see a sliver of you know trips on um private buses Greyhound and flicks bus bike shops Amtrak Metro Link shared scooters and people reporting that this ability to have flexibility across modes within a subsidy program is really um enables them to get to jobs and Health Care um and you know personal stories like a mother told us that now they can go to an exercise class because they have this additional um transportation option and if you think about like I always think of you know going to exercise class always pays its dividends because we know preventative health right always pays dividends in terms of um uh a healthcare right but people don't have the transportation to get them to that exercise right in a in an equitable manner um I will just spend a second on you know there's a question later on that we want to talk about is how did this connect maybe you know we we're testing Mobility wallets with low-income individuals a more flexible way to give people Transportation subsidies that needed the most um but what about getting people out of their cars maybe using a Mobility wallet as an incentive to to get people to shed personal Autos um and so we did another pilot using the same card using the same card vendor uh that we're using true cash right now um where we paid them not to drive um and this was in Santa Monica we did a randomized control trial I can talk more about it another time but the the bottom line is using these kind of payment cards um and paying people to park their car for five weeks um we saw that people stopped stopped driving their second car more and reduced um and reduced their VMT um um so these types of payment uh Solutions have more than just giving Transit subsidies right to people who need it the most we also can use them as a tool to reduce um to reduce people to reduce potentially personal Autos uh the purchase of new Autos um and driving in general so they can be used for both kind of like an incentive of both sides of the coin um and I'll stop there and hand it over to Ruth thanks so much uh and just to introduce Ruth um Ruth is a product manager with over a decade of experience in trip planning and Transit Tech uh she currently manages product and Partnerships at jont which is a Philadelphia based commuter benefits company Ruth is worked previously with the MBTA kitp Lyft and apple she's MIT class of 2007 uh but went to Berkeley for her City Planning degree I appreciate the butt like go Bears they're still they still do a lot of Transportation over there I'm having trouble resuming my share can people I don't think people can see my screen yet uh not quite yet let's try one more time oh no this I don't know which of my schools that I went to this reflects the most Poly on let me see if I can bring them up from my side for you thank you I have them up too I hit pause earlier and I will regret it for the rest of the session Lily you said you had a map as well thank you thank you Lily that's a friend thank you so much all right so hi everyone perfect I think I can remotely Advance them um let's not over think it great so hi my name is Ruth Miller uh proud ofm very good of technology and have gotten to to work really more specifically in trip planning for a very long time and had the pleasure of overlapping with Lily at kitp and that really opened my eyes postco everyone's trying to figure out what can we do to avoid this phisical Cliff how can we get people to ride and it was uh I think for a lot of us a very eye opening experience we we spent we've spent over a hundred years building our cities around cars and all of the systems and obstacles that we're trying to overcome now are going to require a diversity of tactics to address them so there's no there's no one easy solution or some smart person would have done it already so it's an honor and a privilege to be on this panel with folks who represent public and private sector working together to solve these problems that we all need to have solved so thank you next up and the hat that I'm wearing to work on this problem today is with a company called J where a third party Transit benefits Prov and I'm going to talk about the role of employers of the of the private sector in this very hand sector uh challenge so specifically we we work with employers to or just really any large organization to distribute passes to their their members next slide please and that has put us in great company with SEPTA so if anyone's familiar with Philadelphia or Philadelphia lingo John J J is a short short walk and JN is a very Philly thing and we are a very Philly company at our origin and we're just very fortunate to be part of the initial roll out of the septic key Advantage pass and that's what we're going to be talking about today so septic key Advantage go back one more sorry not quite ready thanks is an employer-based pass so you can only receive it through an employer it's an unlimited all access pass if you were to buy an unlimited pass with the city of philadelph or with SEPTA you would spend I think it's like it's a little over $200 apologies to the sepa folks on the call but this pass is available for roughly a 90% discount which is pretty incredible and it works on your existing key card so you don't need a separate card to do it which is of course very nice now next slide please L thank you for for managing this I made it full screen did that mess it up I didn't change on my end but if you could just move to the next slide it's more pixels than I was able to do so I got too clever myself s hold on hold on on I can keep talking through that though so the keep going yeah the details of the septic key Advantage Program I suspect it would be interesting to this group so it launched there we go it launched in May 2022 Co coinciding with a city-wide mandate for employers to provide Transit benefits so just great collaboration across the again the public sector there it was originally limited to much larger compan once with over 500 employees it has been rolled out across the board they're now talking with multif family residential programs employers of all sizes all sectors EDS and meds we like to call them universities and hospitals also being very interesting and of course free Transit is is a lower barrier than than even subsidized Transit so they they're working with employers to advocate for subsidizing is pass beyond its initial cost and it's being administered through a third party Jaun it's always nice when technology can be used to support a human driven process which is what we're trying to do here so John or in this case just a third party let's focus on that supports determining eligibility managing enrollment handling payments that's something that many agencies prefer to do differently some do inous and participation has been great this is a chart showing the number of employers or organizations let say organizations that are participating which that's the direction you want to see that's that's approaching that hockey stick and in general 70% of people who are eligible for this program do load something onto their card and then of those three quarters actually take a trip at least once a month which is what we want to see next please and this I think this is again sing this group would probably enjoy the way this system was priced it's not it's not hard to just offer a discount right like we know cheaper is better subsidies can drive participation but the the process that the SEPTA staff coordinated to Engage The Business Community to engage the city of Philadelphia to come up with a price that felt Fair that's the real accomplishment of this process and they came up with one it's always a balance between complexity and simplicity and and how do you how do you make everyone feel like they're participating and that they know how to participate and that they can and they came up with one that's I would say personally a little more on the complex side but the people that are participating are happy with it and that's that's the only metric that actually matters so it's based on an expected value of of of usage there's an introductory price for the first six months our organizations employers pay based on their eligible population you're considered eligible if you are full-time if you're not uh qualified for a senior unlimited pass already and if you are working full time within the sepa boundary and then they start you off for your first six months at $160 roughly 26 and change per employee per month and then they recalculate that price every six months based on the the cost of or based on the the average revenue per line so this is where it starts to get a little a little tricky and again I can't say enough nice things about the team that sepa has put together to to communicate this and just the the number of events and in person and it's it's so it's it's not a thing that can exist without support from the the business community and that's what they worked really hard to get and obviously got a plug EC consult for doing all the the difficult math on this next slide please so now that was 2022 looking to the present day who's who has participated in this and we can kind of assume people organizations that are civic-minded that want to do the right thing because that's a thing that is incentivized inter internally for them to do no-brainer Campus based ones not a surprise there really either if you've got a lot of people moving to one little area and you don't want to deal with parking subsidizing their transit or helping them get more affordable Transit is going to be a good selling point I personally have been fascinated to see the enthusiastic participation from shift based employers I think this is a group that's often not really considered they're not really the primary audience for a lot of the technology and processes that are designed but they have been very enthusiastic about this and I also want to plug on the bottom right here the city of Philadelphia's zero Fair program not to compare or contrast with LA's incredible program but it's an unlimited transit pass for just for SEPTA for 25,000 low-income residents in the city with automatic eligibility it's a two-year pilot it's wonderful stuff and jont is also very pleased to have any role in in participating and supporting that next slide please unsurprisingly this has been a tremendously popular program I don't have the privilege of working in Philly I live in Boston but I I get to hear my co-workers that just run into folks on the street and overhear them talking about their their septic card and the word of mouth has driven participation by Employers in a great way and positive press this is a good story everyone loves a good story one more slide please High LEL takeaways we we got to collaborate with SEPTA they were generous in Sharing just patient data and usage anonymized obviously and we were able to publish a trb paper on this and the the larger takeaways that we we got were just work with your anchor institutions there's no magic number that will make sense the magic number is the one that your partners can participate in so a program like this that's designed to enable participation from the business Community you have to do it with the business community and treat them as real Partners so working with those then create a knock on effects second one not really surprised the more money you invest in this project the more successful it's going to be so cost sharing subsidies for employees it's easier for employers to participate we can make it even easier for their employees to participate by subsidizing those costs reducing the technical hurdles having an easy to use enrollment experience we've heard from other agencies and other other cities about spreadsheets from Hell there are no spreadsheets from Hell in the that should be the last thing people are worried about and just simplifying the process as much as possible so easy numbers except for that pricing slide easy numbers easy enrollment easy data flows we just want to get people on the bus I believe that might be the last one and uh if anyone has any questions here's my contact information and that bitly link is a shortener for a very detailed description of how subus program is designed and priced and calculated if anyone is interested in more information thank you all so much for your time and LLY for them seeing thanks thanks to all of our panelists this has been a great to see the progress being made here uh I know we've got a ton of questions from the audience um but I'll take a couple minutes here just to get the questions and discussions started um this idea of universal basic Mobility was was mentioned and I wonder if um you all could say a little bit more about that and a related concept which is um in the in scholarship around transport Justice there's been an argument for Universal sufficient access that people should be able to have you know some baseline minimum level of access to Opportunities they need to thrive can you say a little bit more about how you're measuring um how new Mobility options and reduced barriers to ility are helping achieve that access avatal do you want to start since your your program is the like very tied to that yeah I mean uh this idea of everyone should have a basic level of access to transportation and you know particularly in a place that is very Auto oriented like Los Angeles County like even some of the more uh you know uh it even some East Coast cities right that were built before the car that have lots of suburbs that are now becoming less and Le that are becoming more and more Auto oriented um making sure that people particularly in transit deserts right um have a a a a a minimum level of access to transportation that gets them where they need to go when they need to go in a dignified way um you know that we we are looking at what what is what is the metric of un of of um Universal basic mobility and actually our CEO where like has challenged us like what does that mean does that mean that you can get to all of your jobs within an hour um travel time right within LA County within LA County there's some data that basically says you know uh you can get to you know thousands of job opportunities in a car in an hour but um you can only get to like 18 I think it's like it's a it's a in the teens percentage of those jobs if you take public transit right so your your access to opportunity is substantially diminished if you only rely on the Bus and Train Bus and Train may get you some of those places but maybe you need other modes to complete your trip right um or for certain times when you have to be at that you know 10:00 interview or else you're not getting the job right and you can't maybe you can't rely um on the the um a transfer from three buses right that takes you two hours across across the county um so so yeah I think I think we're we're in this process and I think we're talking with other academic institutions like UCLA that are in our backyard and UC Davis that's just a little bit further up north um and welcome the academic Community to kind of dig into this because I think how we you know I think conceptually there's lots of definitions out there but there's there's definitely my executives are coming to me like well what does that mean from a metric standpoint how are we measuring that that everybody gets Universal basic mobility and I'm like have some we definitely have some thoughts but I think it's still a question to be like what is that what does it actually mean and what does that look like I think Choice has a lot to do with it right giving people the choice um and the power to say like right now um using a car to go get groceries because I have three kids that I need to take with me um or or you know or I need to be back in 15 minutes because I only have child care until 5:30 and I have to be back home right I think those things are important to empowering people um for Choice um Lily or or Ruth you you have a thoughts on universal basic Mobility yeah yes just I guess building on what you just said is um I think because avatal is a transit or said a Transit Agency operating Transit from the state of California's perspective their excitement is around using mobility and public transit as a moment or an opportunity for financial inclusion so uh the the interest is really in sort of broadening our definition and our understanding of equity and access Beyond Mobility because this is the state of California and thinking more about um Financial inclusion and getting people uh banked and people who don't have a bank card access to using Transit using a bank card can be an excellent first step towards building comfort and awareness about digital payment options that uh are available to folks so uh I think avatal is sort of the um describing Universal basic Mobility as um an essential need for getting folks the access they need to move around their Community but that's also a moment that somebody could also become aware of other digital options that are available to them so uh yes and thanks um let me move on to another question which is how are you uh you mentioned kind of the vehicle miles traveled VMT reduction how are you measuring either VMT reduction or carbon uh carbon impact here and I don't know if others have thoughts on you know whether that's still an argument you're having to make Ruth you want to you want to go first on this one I'm always happy to hear your answers but I I will make a short one I appreciate how that is not a topic that we're having to to deal with I I think in general Transit good Transit better than drive and um I've i' spent enough time in California to be very familiar with squa and having to be able to measure every possible impact and outcome and I appreciate that so many of our partners when ask just say we're getting people on the bus that's that is the goal and there's been some fascinating research published recently about even if you're not just just like General operating efficiencies getting more people riding Transit is good for cities and that is our our objective yeah I would just add that for the State of California the air resources board so the carb in their latest scoping plan which is the state's plan to uh meet our climate goals included a whole chapter a whole um Annex on sustainable communities and this topic about Transit Technology Innovation was one of the four key uh um Pathways highlighted in that section so removing barriers to people even becoming aware of where Transit is in their community and removing barriers to getting on board the bus or the train is seen as a essential um piece of meeting our greenhouse gas emissions targets and Avatar I cut you off no that important note um you know the the way that I think we see um you know payment Innovations and um you know a uh a wallet right for transportation access um and somebody somebody in the chat said it shouldn't be it shouldn't be one card and I agree not one card because I actually want it in one place right I want it in this this thing or some some something that I'm already caring right so it's about how it kind of fits into the ecosystem of something that I'm already using and maybe sometime somebody wants a fingerprint right but that's another story another topic for another day um possibly not but yeah it included in something that people are already using for payment um so more about uh UniFi unification right and and and streamlining um but also getting people banked so I think this idea of like we know that there was a study about 10 years ago we have there actually isn't most recent data but maybe L has more data on this like in LA county there was about a million people that are unbanked as of about 10 years ago this is an older study um from PE research and you know this idea of getting people banked I think is important um VMT is interesting because from the study that we're doing with low-income individuals right they are actually maybe um increasing some of their driving trips uh short short term right from the data that we see for 12 months I think the big question is we know that in Los Angeles County that's very car oriented that if you are um you know if if you want to access all the things that you need to to get opportunity your F your household needs to really have a car and that the threshold of when low-income individuals bought purchase a car is actually really low it's like it's like a certain it's still with within uh what's considered low income but it's like at certain threshold UCLA has some great data on this um and so if we can delay that that Financial outlay for a low-income household to have to purchase another household car or their first household car um we know that that's a savings and I think H and so the mobility wallet even for low-income PE for low-income individuals that might actually be increasing some of their single occupancy trip making because we consider taxis and and ride hailing a single occupancy trips for when we do VMT and air quality an Anis I think that longterm and you know we're going to do some post post uh participant surveys and ask people are you able to not have a car or postpone the purchase of a new car right um and so I think looking at that because we know that uh car car ownership is linked to VMT and and air pollution and driving miles travels right and the more cars your households have and higher income households drive more and have and create more vehicles miles traveled so I think thinking about that it's a long game for low-income households um I think it's also using it as an incentive to get high middle mid- inome and higher income households maybe to shed cars or to drive less so I think we can use basically experimenting with this idea of you know using banking rails as an incentive model and as this kind of seamless Transportation wallet um so we can use that model as I shared in this one car challenge um to as an incentive and I think we're thinking about how do we also link it to potentially congestion pricing in the future right um right now LA County LA Metro is currently setting this and a traffic reduction study TRS you can look it up um you know New York is looking at this Boston is looking at this you know the bay area has been tinkering and thinking about congestion pricing right so I think linking the two up right as from like an equity perspective from like a holistic perspective is also how you link it to vehicle miles travel and and air quality improvement fascinating yeah I know the carb scoping plan has really said even with full uh you know electrification mandates on vehicle sales BMT is still a hugely important goal but this complexity of you know maybe a little bit of shortterm increase in VMT to help people access opportunities and then also kind of delay or postpone a bigger step change in in VMT really interesting a lot of a lot of cool research uh underway on that um just really quickly uh to scale this up kind of procurement challenges any Lessons Learned on um the role of interoperable data or Open Standards on helping get over some procurement uh hurdles wow uh we have three minutes and that could be a whole seminar uh on procurement Avital and I's favorite subject um I think that as an industry the transit industry has done done a terrible job of taking advantage of global standards that exist for every all other Industries and applying them to ours instead we like to create our own in many cases that's perfectly acceptable because we have Transit vehicle needs or Transit you know specific purposes but payments and how people pay for things should not be unique to Transit but be part of the Global Payments ecosystem and those standards already exist and are used around the world and so I think that if you use those standards and you can have access to vendors and suppliers that provide validators for Transit agencies and other payment devices all over the world you can simplify your procurement requirements and procurement writing press processes then you also have access to a broader pool of vendors and better pricing because it's not Transit specific pricing but people who are providing those services or devices for other Industries as well lots more to say on that and that's one of the hypotheses and theories behind the Cali model where the state is basically providing that procurement support on behalf of all of the transit agencies in the US and saying we don't need to do this agency by agency but we could have a greater level of aggregation and therefore get better pricing models and better support lot more to say obviously I'm not passionate about the topic at all thanks um thanks again for all the insights Bo on uh thank you for tracking the the very active chat um we'd love to hear kind of what's been what's what's top of Mind there yeah uh I mean well I I hope I've done a good job of tracking that and you know to the the discussion point just now on uh on data standards so Rob had had actually asked a question how do you get multiple providers to agree to put customer value and simplicity over their proprietary concern you know we're seeing that right here in Boston the Kendall Square Red Line station has the tap to pay kiosks but they've not been activated because what I've been told is the the fair machines do not you know sync with these so if you get a ticket from the fair machine and if they activate the credit card Machin you'll not be able to pass through this and the other so you know just a very very key point on why having these data standards uh you know standardized across the country probably will you know would have Pro prevented such types of you know Investments and delays in activation couple of questions on J so I'm looking at you Ruth uh so have the SEPTA or similar programs generated any surprising insights about cust customer use adoption and have these led to service changes you know uh as in different RS to accommodate shift workers and another question from Sylvia is that are contractors rather than regular employees also eligible for these benefits both all all good questions the question about service changes is a great one and I if I get invited back answer and if we do this again next year I'll have a good answer for it I I know they're it's still new enough but I am certain that's something that they're paying paying attention to and the contractor one is uh Unfortunately they are not so the the this system is based on the federal tax codes uh Transit French benefits pre-tax so for for folks who are not familiar with us federal tax code if you are a full-time employee in the US you are allowed to deduct $315 this number changes every year due to inflation or use on parking for the purpose of commuting to get to work another 315 for Transit plus b pool they're kind of shared out of that pot again for the purpose of getting to work so a lot of these or all of these commuter benefit requirements are based on taking advantage of those systems I'd be very curious to know what the rules are in other countries and that unfortunately then excludes contractors and part-time and other other groups so unfortunately no this particular solution is geared very closely to employers but the SE Advantage Program I mentioned they're talking with residential groups the low-income Fair program with the city of Philadelphia isn't sep to key Advantage but it's similar I would say the employer program is often an easy topic to get people started about because hey who doesn't want to have the business Community take on more of their fair share of using this infrastructure that was largely designed to support them right like that's why downtowns exist so it's a great initial conversation and then once that hard work is done and ideally there's some good rewards and benefits then those discussion uh patterns and and language can ideally be followed by quick discussion about low-income regular people that live in multi family units whatever the the identity is that makes one part of a group that could be benefited by this yeah thanks for that um I I want to move on to this question that Saul asked and uh you know it's having to identify yourself as a loow income individual to your transit system in order to make you know Transit affordable go and qualify for a particular you know scheme or a grant you know it's inherent inherently you know is it you know there could be some hesitancy there uh you know even in here Mary skeleton Roberts was on the board of the MBTA raised this concern that you know it's not the nicest thing to go and uh you know get this claim or this you know low pass card so I'm just wondering uh I mean I'm a huge fan of the LA Mobility wallet so you know what sort of steps can be taken to reduce and remove these barriers in you know equity and yeah so I think there's a couple things that LA Metro recently have done that and and not our program right our overarching um you know Office of Management and budget and our Fair groups have done that I think actually you know try to minimize the barrier of of you know ident you know identifying of of applying for these programs right one of the things is we do self-attestation so you don't have to provide any documentation that you're low income you just have to self identify and and check a box that says yes I am in this income bracket um which is similar to what people do when they apply for a credit card um or apply for a lot of other you know middle and higher income right like I get asked my income on a lot of things right when I apply for a mortgage right so I think leveling that I think that has helped a lot and our low-income fair is easy program has like uh you know exponentially grown because of that reducing the barrier and we there is a kind of like an audit process on the back end um and we basically modeled it out off of the lowincome subsidy programs um for utilities I think that's that a few companies U public utility companies have been running and had success with right um so we do the same thing for the mobility wallet it's just self attestation where you check a box you say I am low income um and you check a box on your income right so we found that you know that helps um you know for our audit per you know this is a this is a bigger policy question beyond beyond uh my department my agency right um when we provide subsidies to people because they need it the most um we like to know that we like to make sure that that we're audit proof there's lots of questions about uh terminal verified cards versus MCC code and I'm curious Lily and Ruth because this is my first time time thinking thinking a lot about that right that we have to be audit proof and every program has to be audited and we need to you know we're going to get audited all of our all of our programs currently are funded by state grants we're actually going to get into using some federal grants so I think that's as as long as our structure is the way it is and that is somebody auditing the program and where the money is going we're gonna have to do some kind of but I think sub attestation is the best we can do uh for now even better is some of the programs that CP and others are working on about and that I've seen internationally right when you have a I don't know if this better or not like you have a driver's license and you're identified already or or ID right and you're identified once as a certain income and then it it qualifies you for all these programs and you don't have to even talk about it or self attest right and that would be a better process we don't have that in place quite yet but I don't know Lily if you want to talk a little bit about that and what that could bring yeah I mean the the challenge of or the issue of um people get qualifying for discounts when they go across multiple service providers think about the computer rail to the Transit Agency or multiple Transit agencies in a region or even if you're taking a bike share to the station how that could work um wouldn't it be nice if you could receive a senior discount or a student discount or a veteran discount across those different service providers in a way that doesn't require you to you know verify your identity and eligibility multiple times but also to the original point doesn't stigmatize You by having to tap something special or have a lowincome ID card um but that you can pay the same way everyone else is paying you are just charged less um so that's really the vision behind the the discounted tool that I mentioned for California um and again that relies on login.gov which is um a Federated identity service where you aren't receiving the actual information but it is privacy protective um and a privacy first approach I'll put some more on that in the chat as well yeah absolutely no you're quite active in the chat I saw that so thanks for that uh so um so a you shared the data on you know the the VMT usage so Handlin had a question you know regarding the the randomized control trial that you all did uh so do you all analyze the usage of the transit card data or and transaction records or do you all do a mix of follow-up interviews and looking at the data because you know we you know correlation is not causations we actually need to figure out whether these programs actually eliminate the need for a car and it's not just you know easing you know Transit payments and the burden but also Service delivery so you know what sort of service deliveries need to be added because people are traveling at certain hours of the day similar to the sepa question so just curious to for your thoughts on that you know do follow on interviews actually uh res in service changes saying that hey we need the bus to run at 5:00 a.m. because that's when

I actually need to get to work so yeah so one of the this is a a the question of uh compliance and validation of like you know data when you give people an incentive not to drive and actually validating that they didn't drive and they did something else is like is some is a is a a challenge for these programs um what we what we did for this you know small pilot with 300 people is we had people submit um a picture and a number of their odometer of their second car of both cars they had to or three car if they identified they had three cars they had to submit the odometer readings um and a picture of the odometer um for all of those cars and you know uh shout out to Duke center for advanced hindsight we worked with this behavioral economics kind of think tank they did a lot of you know some of the manual and thinking about how do we you know ask people for some of the data that we can follow up we also did Issue $50 uh credit on a a promo code on a TAP card so we actually have some of that data we if people did redeem the $50 on a Transit card um it created an account in the back end and we can look at their transer writers ship we're still actually doing some analysis of like that um so so data data to come um you know the and I didn't share the slide but like a lot of the mode shift we actually saw in walking and biking right because we happen to do this in Santa Monica Santa Monica as a city is a very you know compar compared especially compared to other cities in LA county and it's it's beautiful and sunny right great climate most of the year um it's a great place to walk and bike and um there's you know lots of good kind of mixing of of of uh terms of land use it's a lot of great kind of mixed land use where you can kind of walk or bike to the grocery store or the drugstore or even a hospital right it's got a lot of lot to offer so um we saw a lot more probably shift to walking and biking which is harder to validate right we need to give people some kind of like GPS app or something like that which you know compliance and using it we've we've we've been experimenting but been been struggling with that so we did validate that they didn't drive actually looking at which modes and how much of those modes they switch to we use surveys weekly surveys and we're going to follow up with them three months afterwards to see if that actually stuck um but yeah uh you know right now we're kind of thinking about if scale this up do we have to have uh telematic devices in people's cars um to really you know to really do we work with an insurance company do we just do pictures and and do you know would love would love people if anybody has ideas on this we probably will release some kind of RFI RFP on this because it is like how do you make it userfriendly so people actually want to participate right and it's not it yes this still going to be a research pilot but it's going to be if you're going to scale it up to several thousand people in LA county how do you make it so there's compliance but it's still userfriendly and I think that's the balance right yeah I mean an OBD based telematics device probably be the easiest or just you know having a you know a coordination with the US AG based insurance policy that they already have and are submitting data there just get data from that yeah uh we at times I'm going to pass the Forum onto J thank yeah sorry to inter such a warm conversation there well continue for but not an hour or so so we'll compile the question from the chat share with the panelist hopefully you can give us some more written response what we'll summarize and share with the broad audience right so thanks Dr Anon Steward for organizing and moderate session again and thank Rose a and the Le for the BR presentation and conversation everybody for joining thank the panel here

2024-05-11 03:15

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