Regional council approves funding for card payments on transit

Halifax transit users are one step closer to being able to pay a fare with debit or credit.

Halifax regional council authorized spending Tuesday of $769,000 for new modems on Halifax Transit vehicles.

The new modems — cellular routers that connect buses to the internet — will allow passengers to now tap their credit and debit cards for single fare payment.

Users currently have to buy online fares on the HFXGO app and activate them before using the service. The old modems don’t support two-way communication from card to internet to verify fares. That will change once they are replaced with the new technology.

“The two-way communication doesn’t exist,” said Marc Santilli, Halifax Transit’s manager of technical services. “Tap to pay and open payment wouldn’t be possible until we have these modems.”

Deputy mayor Tony Mancini said he is concerned about the time it will take to update all 378 buses and ferries, which may cause delays in improving the transit system.

“Every one of us in this room has knocked on thousands of doors and heard that we need to improve on transit,” Mancini said. “Why are we only purchasing these modems now?”

Santilli said he shared Mancini’s frustration. He said there was miscommunication between various groups within HRM and that his team only discovered that the current modems couldn’t support credit card communication with the fare scanners after they were all installed. 

“Our friends at IT bent over backwards to try and make it work and they were not able to do so,” said Santilli. “The best solution that we could see was to replace these modems that would have to be replaced anyway within the next year or two.”

Transit demands

The modem meeting came after a municipal resident survey review led by Michael Pappas, director of corporate planning and performance. The survey results show that 21 per cent of survey respondents see transit as a top issue.

“The satisfaction and ease of getting around is not great,” said Pappas, referring to the survey results.

Part of the survey showed a 46 per cent increase in people who take the bus since 2021.

Mancini said later in the modem meeting that the data shows a clear demand of people who are looking for transit improvements. He wants there to be a faster response time for when things go wrong.

“We talk about wanting to be a world class city, and in many ways we are. But world class cities have a transit system that does this stuff,” said Mancini.

Santilli said the new modems would not need to be replaced again after this purchase but will take a few months to get installed.

Mancini said he would like Santilli to provide updates on the project’s progress to keep council informed.

GPS installations on vehicles to track buses on route started in 2017 with the HFXGO app introduced in October 2023.