The LIRR and the Metro-North will ask the MTA Board Wednesday to award a $2 million contract to Masabi to develop and implement a mobile ticketing system for the LIRR and Metro-North:
The LIRR Today wrote:At today's combined LIRR and Metro-North MTA Board Committee Meeting, the LIRR will advance a $2 million service contract to Masabi, LLC to develop and deploy a mobile ticketing system for use on LIRR and Metro-North trains (the contract will be officially awarded at Wednesday's MTA Board Meeting). This new system will allow LIRR and Metro-North passengers to purchase and display tickets on their mobile phones while onboard trains, much like NJTransit's MyTix system...Read more here: LIRR Awards Mobile Ticketing Contract to Masabi
The vendor of the Mobile Ticketing system will provide a mobile app for passengers to use on their phones, ticket validation software for train crews to use to inspect and verify tickets, and a host server that will support both railroads' systems. The vendor will also come up with an online web portal system to allow passengers to purchase tickets on their computers and print them out, however this feature will be implemented at the railroad's discretion and many not be rolled out at the same time as the mobile ticketing app...
Masabi is a proven vendor who has successfully rolled out mobile ticketing systems to several railroads in the United States and in Europe, including MBCR in Boston. I have never used the mobile ticketing system on the MBCR, but from what I've seen and read online, it seems to be a pretty good system for what is was designed to do...
With Masabi's track record of implementing mobile ticketing systems fairly quickly it hopefully won't be long until we see mobile ticketing hit Metro-North and LIRR trains. If they can match the deployment schedule they did for MBCR, 29 weeks would bring us to mid-November of this year. Masabi is also on-target to complete NICE's mobile ticketing rollout in about six months or so, and that would also bring us into early November. Knowing the MTA, there's bound to be a couple hiccups along the way, but it would not be unreasonable to expect a pretty well rolled out mobile ticketing system on LIRR and Metro-North trains by early next year. It will be interesting to see how the deployment goes; hopefully it goes smoothly!
