By Blake Haas

BLOOMINGTON – At the cost of over $75,000 over three years, Connect Transit bus riders will soon have a new application to pay for bus fares.

Riders who use the Genfare Mobile Ticketing app can prepay or pay on demand by imputing credit or debit card information.

“A lot of people nowadays are going cashless,” said Connect Transit Chief Operating Officer Martin Glaze. “This (application) provides a great opportunity to put that sort of thing on each bus would be very expensive. So the mobile app provides a perfect opportunity for that.”

To fund the project, Connect Transit will use $60,488 of the Federal Transit Administration grant funds and $15,112 of local capital funds.

“It will have all of our normal passes on there,” added Glaze. “People will be able to buy those, activate them when they are about to board the bus, and able to store them and use them later.”

Through working with Genfare to add features like Fare Capping, Connect Transit was able to negotiate a lower price to save over $185,440.

“This kind of gives riders that head-start before they even get on,” said Glaze. “They just go to the app, and they plan their trip…it walks them through the entire process before they have to get on the bus.”

There is still no release date for the app as Connect Transit is waiting for Genfare to finalize their contract with clearinghouse, which progresses the credit card transactions.

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].