Cubic Transportation Systems Inc., the transportation business unit of Cubic Corp., has been awarded a $15 million contract to design, deliver and provide services for a new smart card ticketing and revenue management system for the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA), which will be interoperable with Miami-Dade County's new EASY CARD system.

Tri-Rail, the commuter rail service connecting Palm Beach and Broward Counties with Miami-Dade County, will be the first transit agency to join in the creation of a South Florida regional system, giving Floridians the ability to use one fare card — a smart card — to travel on both systems. Palm Tran and Broward County Transit are expected to join later.

Tri-Rail's transaction monitoring, processing, settlement and reporting will be handled by the Miami-Dade Transit through the back-office system of Cubic's Nextfare open software and hardware platform. Nextfare integrates a business management system and passenger devices for smart card issuing, processing and validating. The open design enables multiple agencies in a region to share resources while keeping all proprietary information separate and secure, giving agencies a way to reduce costs. Examples of regional systems where Cubic's Nextfare systems are in use are the greater Los Angeles area, Atlanta, and Brisbane, Australia.

Miami-Dade Transit's EASY CARD, which officially launched in October, was built, integrated and fully operational across all bus and rail services within 15 months, an accomplishment owing to the increasing maturity of Nextfare, which has been fielded by more than a dozen transit agencies around the world.

The SFRTA system will process smart cards and printed tickets and will encompass 76 ticket vending machines, 85 station validators, six ticket office machines, and 60 handheld units.

The SFRTA-Miami Dade Transit interoperability will create the first multi-agency regional system that is compliant with APTA's Contactless Fare Media Standard that has been adopted in public transport as the national standard.