Craiova, Romania, has a population of 269,000 people and its transit agency deals with an average of 21 000 000 passenger rides per year. The transit system in the city was suffering from problems related to the old-fashioned equipment, but since it wasn’t in a bad state, the city wanted to still use it and build upon it a better, more modern public transportation system. Craiova’s transit agency, RAT Craiova, was also facing fare collection issues and low levels of passenger satisfaction that needed to be dealt with on a rather tight budget.
The Modeshift Fare Collection Solution
RAT Craiova, with the help of Modeshift Fare Collection, implemented the first account based ticketing system in Romania. The end-to-end solution for automated fare collection and CAD/AVL provided valuable real-time data to the transit agency which optimized both the work of the transit agency and the passengers’ experience. The mobile application with route planning, flexible payment and fare options (including discounted subscriptions) proved to be an important part of the transformation as it helped increase ticket revenue collection.
Low budget – stunning results
Due to the agility of the Modeshift Fare Collection system and the ability of the team to adapt the system to the already existing hardware, RAT Craiova yielded great results without a large initial investment with a high risk factor. By using an intuitive mobile application and allowing citizens to pay in different ways depending on their preferences, ticket revenue collection was increased by 20% and monitoring became easier for the RAT Craiova staff. Real-time data became a valuable resource for further optimizations.
Real-time passenger information makes the service predictable. Payment is easy and the extremely low validation dwell time eliminates unnecessary delays. As a result, RAT Craiova recorded ridership increase. The reliable fare collection and control system led to a 20% increase in ticket revenue collection.
Sorin Manda, General Manager RAT Craiova
