TriMet rail sells more than 500K mobile tickets

In the less than five months since Portland, Ore.-based TriMet made its TriMet Tickets mobile ticketing app available, riders have purchased more than 500,000 mobile tickets.

“Frankly, the use and enthusiasm over the mobile ticket app has been surprising,” said TriMet GM Neil McFarlane. “We are always looking for improvements that benefit our riders and we knew mobile ticketing would provide them a new convenience, we just didn’t know how quickly they would embrace it.”

The free TriMet Tickets app has been downloaded more than 60,000 times since the agency launched it in early September. The app allows riders to buy fares on their smartphones. The mobile tickets are then stored in riders’ phones for use with a few taps of the screen.

With the app, TriMet riders became the first in the U.S. to use a mobile ticket to ride both buses and trains, according to the transit agency.