Trademark, equipment delays slow Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s replacement of ConnectCards

Plans for Pittsburgh Regional Transit to issue a new version of its ConnectCard fare system with major new features that had been expected to debut at the beginning of this year will be pushed back several more months.

Jeffrey Devlin, the agency’s chief innovation officer, said the biggest problem in introducing the enhanced payment system has been a delay in trademarking the name for the new card, which hasn’t been revealed yet. Devices known as validators have been installed in all buses and light rail vehicles to read the new cards, but vending machines to sell new products at bus stops also haven’t been installed yet.

“It’s working its way through the trademarking process,” Devlin said Friday. “We’re still projecting late summer and fall. We’re very comfortable with the pace.”

Devlin said when the new payment card is introduced, riders will have as long as six months to spend all the money on their ConnectCard and switch to the new one. It hasn’t been determined yet whether riders will be issued a new card for free or they will have to pay a small fee.

The new cards are part of a transition that began in 2019, when PRT awarded a $2.85 million contract to Masabi LLC to switch to a web-based system from the electronic system developed by Scheid & Bachmann USA Inc. about 15 years ago. That system, which included fareboxes and other hardware proprietary to Scheid & Bachmann, became limiting when other firms developed innovative products that couldn’t be used with its system such as making payments by mobile phone.

It also posed other challenges because it could take as long as three days for funds added to a riders’ account to be available for them to use.

With the Masabi system, riders can add money to their account or purchase a ticket and use it immediately. Riders began using smartphones to pay fares in August 2021.

The new farecard will allow PRT to use all the benefits of the Masabi system and make paying fares simpler for riders.

For example, right now riders who use their mobile phones to pay fares also may have a ConnectCard with a separate account. With the new card, they will be able to do all transactions — buying a ticket, adding money to their account, paying their fare — from that card and have only one account.

Additionally, the agency isn’t locked into using only Masabi equipment. It sought competitive bids for new vending machines and awarded an $8.85 million contract to Parkeon Inc. early last year to replace 76 vending machines.

The first new vending machines will be at stations for the University Line, which expects to open five Downtown Pittsburgh stations next month, but the machines won’t be available until later in the year. Still Devlin said he is looking forward to making new services available to riders.

“We know we have a tried-and-true system that has been working well for the past four, five years,” Devlin said.

Although the Scheid & Bachmann machines that read ConnectCards will be eliminated in the next six months for machines that accept cash only, the PRT board last week approved one-year contract extensions for the warranties on the fareboxes and on the software and other equipment used to run the system. The farebox extension cost just over $1 million and the software just over $2 million.

Devlin said delays in obtaining the replacement equipment and getting the trademark for the new card approved had nothing to do with the warranty extensions.

“We always knew we were going to have to do this,” Devlin said. “We think it’s good business to make sure we are covered until we are completely done using that equipment.”