CA: Monterey-Salinas Transit to get $450K to test new payment systems

Monterey-Salinas Transit will receive $449,860 from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration to demonstrate an innovative method to test and verify the eligibility for rider discounts in contactless payment systems.

MST was one of two projects to receive a share of the $1.25 million available under the 2025 Enhancing Mobility Innovation program, it was announced last Friday. Selected projects will develop and demonstrate new approaches to improve the experience for transit riders.

MST will test and demonstrate a method to verify the eligibility for rider discounts in contactless payment systems. The systems allow transit riders to use credit or debit cards to pay fares, and MST’s new approach will verify eligible riders can tap to pay while receiving discounts based on their employment or student status.

The Federal Transit Administration’s Enhancing Mobility Innovation program supports innovation in mobility to meet the evolving needs of transit riders, advances equitable and climate-smart transportation, and improves public transportation. The Federal Transit Administration will disseminate key findings and practices from each EMI project to inform and encourage similar innovations nationwide.

The other project to receive funding was the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to retrofit electric buses with automated driving features.

The funding from the Federal Transit Administration’s Enhancing Mobility Innovation program enables transit agencies and research organizations to advance technologies, strategies, and innovations that create a safe, reliable, equitable and accessible transit experience, from developing simpler ways for riders to pay fares to adjusting transit schedules based on demand.

The program advances a vision of mobility for all – safe, reliable, equitable and accessible services that support complete trips. The program promotes technology projects that focus on the traveler experience and encourage people to get on board, such as integrated fare payment systems and user-friendly software for demand-response public transportation.

Enhancing Mobility Innovation projects fall under two categories according to the Federal Transit Administration.The first category is Accelerate Innovative Mobility – concept development and/or demonstration projects that improve mobility and enhance the rider experience with a focus on innovative service delivery models, creative financing, novel partnerships and integrated payment solutions. The second category is Software Solutions – projects that facilitate integrated demand-response public transportation that dispatches transit vehicles through riders’ mobile devices or other technology.

The Enhancing Mobility Innovation Competitive Funding Opportunity implements two provisions of the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act, that directs the Federal Transit Administration to competitively fund $968,000 in cooperative agreements to accelerate mobility innovations that improve mobility and enhance the rider experience, and $968,000 in cooperative agreements for the development of software solutions to facilitate demand-response public transportation, and is authorized under the Public Transportation Innovation Program.

The Enhancing Mobility Innovation projects are funded under the Federal Transit Administration’s Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment program authority.

Last October, Monterey-Salinas Transit was awarded more than a million dollars by the California State Transportation Agency Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program to fund a travel information and promotion system.

The $1,160,000 to MST was part of the 2024 Awards Cycle 7 Selected Projects and will help to fund the estimated $6,955,000 cost to procure and deploy a digital transit traveler information system for the Salinas Transit Center, Marina Transit Exchange, Sand City Station and Monterey Transit Plaza, vehicles and bus stop shelters. The system Monterey-Salinas Transit currently uses to display real-time bus information in key service areas was implemented 20 years ago and is technologically obsolete and impacts the ability to share bus information with passengers.

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