Halifax Transit hoping electronic payment available to riders by 2021

Halifax Transit wants to implement new electronic options to pay for bus fares, including smart cards.

"It could be smart cards, such as Presto, or it could be a mobile app or a debit or credit tap to pay," said Marc Santilli, Halifax Transit manager of technical services.

Those various methods are now under review, he said. Halifax Transit plans to make a recommendation to regional council by early 2020 on which electronic option is best. 

Once the option is approved, Halifax Transit hopes to have electronic payment up and running by 2021. 

Before Halifax Transit can move to an electronic pay option, they need to install new fare boxes that can be adapted to recognize electronic payment.

The fare boxes were supposed to be installed by now. In a report presented to Halifax's transportation committee on Thursday, the delays are blamed on "design and planning" problems.

Initially, the plan was for the new fare boxes to accept wallet-sized tickets as an interim measure until the electronic pay option was implemented. 

Santilli would not say Thursday if the delays means the larger ticket stage could get skipped altogether and the new fare boxes would accept electronic pay options as soon as they are up and running.

He also did not know the timeline for such a decision.

None of the councillors on the transportation committee asked any questions about the implementation of the fare management system. They were happy with the ridership numbers for the April to June quarter of 2019. There was a 9.3 per cent increase in the number of people who used the transit system over those three months compared with the same time period in 2018.

"This is a good news story," said Coun. Shawn Cleary. "I'm looking forward to the rest of the changes really being impressively efficient."

The next round of route changes will take place in November and mainly affect routes in Lower Sackville.