APTA Awards Cubic for Contributions to Smart Card Standard Development

Cubic’s achievements in the Proximity Smart Card Data Format Standards Development were recognized with an award from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) at the organization’s 2005 Annual Meeting & Expo in Dallas September 25-28.

Walt Bonneau, Cubic Corporation vice president, accepted the award on behalf of Cubic. Cubic’s Pradip Mistry, Brian Monk, Dave Andrews and Bonneau were singled out for their significant contributions to development of this standard, as part of APTA’s WP-1 team, a subcommittee of APTA’s Systems Work Group, which is made up of industry private companies and transit authorities.

Cubic’s technical contributions cited by APTA  enabled the group to develop and release to APTA a document containing the necessary guidelines and standards to support an interoperable transit proximity smart card environment, including the communications to and from the card reader.

Development of the WP-1 project was originated by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PANYNJ) which provided the core specifications for completion by the APTA committee.

Also known as the Regional Interoperability Specification (RIS), the interoperable card data format is currently being used for Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) and the Port Authority Transit Corporation (PATCO) projects in the New York / New Jersey Region.  APTA is currently reviewing the RIS as a candidate for a national standard that would be used in the development of interoperable multi-agency, multi-modal smart card fare collection systems for regional transit systems.