Cubic Transportation Systems has introduced its new Fare Loss Avoidance Reporting Engine (FLARE) — technology designed to flag fare evading in real time.
“FLARE can distinguish between legitimate scenarios — such as a mother holding a child’s hand or someone pushing a wheelchair — versus fare evasion,” Ellory Monks, Cubic chief ventures officer, said via email.
Visitors to the Transport Ticketing Global conference in London March 4 and 5 got a preview of the new technology. The company anticipates rolling it out to transit agency partners this year, officials said.
Transit agencies like the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston, which uses Cubic technology for its fare payment platform, are reportedly looking at upgrades to fare gates, introducing all-door boarding on buses and payment systems as they work toward preventing fare evasion.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) serving the San Francisco Bay Area also uses Cubic technology to power the Clipper card, the account-based contactless payment platform used by transit systems across the Bay Area. BART has been involved in a fare gate modernization project to replace its 700 gates across the network, a project expected to be complete by the end of the year. Its gates, which are not the new Cubic gates, are taller than the older models and are designed to help prevent fare evasion.
The new Cubic fare gates, known as FEnX, include the FLARE technology. They leverage software with computer vision and machine learning to monitor all traffic, detecting, recording and flagging fare evasion in real time. Officials stress the technology is only designed to “classify objects and detect fare evasion,” Monks said. “The gates do not and cannot capture or disclose any personally identifiable information or biometric data to agencies or law enforcement.”
The data collected is owned by each transit agency, and storing or sharing the data is governed by each individual entity, Monks said.
“Our goal is for FEnX and FLARE to empower each transit agency with autonomy, governed by their local laws and regulatory bodies, of their data,” she said.
