Vix Technology, a global provider of transport ticketing solutions, has expanded Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s (DART) GoPass® Tap automated fare collection (AFC) platform to now include the Dallas Streetcar, offering passengers a better customer journey.
Already deployed on bus and light rail services across the city—one of the U.S’s most populous and fastest-growing—the system expansion is a key component of an ambitious project to integrate all modes of public transportation across the surrounding region into one seamless payment platform, including rail, bus, paratransit and microtransit services.
The Dallas Streetcar is operated by DART for the City of Dallas, and travels over a 2.4-mile route across the city. To support the new payment capability, launched on schedule on July 27th, 2020, Vix’s validation devices were installed across the Dallas Streetcar fleet, matching those found on other modes of transit around the city to simplify the mobility experience for passengers.
DART’s fare collection system is built on Vix Pulse, an innovative multi-modal, multi-operator platform that unifies account-based ticketing, mobile, and contactless payments into a single, secure, easy-to-operate and managed platform. Vix’s cloud-based platform serves DART’s 200,000+ daily riders (66 million annually) across Dallas and 12 surrounding municipalities.
Costing a $1 one-way fare purchasable in the DART GoPass mobile app, passengers can also tap and go with a reloadable GoPass Tap Card that can be purchased and reloaded at 7-Eleven, ACE Cash Express, Tom Thumb and Fiesta Mart locations in the DART Service Area. The fare is also included with any valid pre-purchased DART pass.
Contactless bank card payment trials for the entire DART network will begin in late 2020 and fully launch in 2021. This will allow customers to use their contactless bank cards and mobile wallets to pay quickly and easily for transit without obtaining a card or downloading an app.