Case Study: Charlottesville Area Transit cuts fare collection costs and fraud with Trapeze Group EZFare

How Cat Decreased the Cost of Collection by More than 50%

Charlottesville Area Transit (CAT) was looking to replace its dated fareboxes with a more advanced automated fare collection system that would improve the rider experience, reduce counterfeit day passes and fraud, support smart technology, track university IDs, and provide better reporting. The agency also needed more accurate ridership data for planning and scheduling, since drivers were missing an estimated 5% to 8% of boardings in cash payments.

Trapeze Group implemented its EZFare automated fare collection solution for CAT, enabling cash payments, barcoded day passes, smart media, and barcode scanning of university IDs. As a result, CAT reduced fraud and cash-handling costs, improved customer satisfaction, gained stop-level ridership data, and cut cash-counting labor from two full-time employees spending three hours a day to one employee spending one hour a day. The system also helped CAT reduce its stops from 400 to 321 based on ridership data, while processing about 64,000 university IDs per month with only four failures.

Charlottesville Area Transit

John Jones

Transit Manager