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Jawnt’s Ruth Miller attended the CTAA Expo & CALACT Spring Meeting in San Diego this month, where over 1,100 transit operators, funders, vendors, and more came together to talk transportation and more.
Earlier this month, two of the biggest associations of public transit agencies in the US came together to host a conference and expo in San Diego. Over 1,100 participants gathered, representing transit operators, funders, vendors, and everyone in between. Our own Director of Product Partnerships, Ruth Miller, joined the fray. Here are a few of her takeaways.
The Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) is a staff association that provides technical expertise to transit agencies. Unlike TRB, Transport Ticketing, and other relatively costly organizations, CTAA tends to draw participation from smaller transit agencies. CTAA hosts this expo once a year, moving around the United States (the next one is in Omaha). Year-round, CTAA staff connect agencies to resources that help them fund, procure, operate, and maintain their fleets, staff, and services.
This year’s CTAA was in California, so joining up with CALACT was a natural fit. CALACT, the California Association for Coordinated Transportation, provides similar support to similarly-sized agencies within California. CALACT’s next large in-person event will be in Stateline, Nevada (on the California border in the high Sierras).
SEPTA, in Philadelphia, is the seventh largest transit operator in the United States, and it has over 1400 buses in its fleet. Monterey-Salinas Transit, along the California’s central coast, has 200 buses. Nevada County Transit, which operates near Lake Tahoe, has about a dozen. SEPTA takes in much more money than these two agencies combined, and has more staff, but they all have to perform roughly the same tasks. All transit agencies run payroll, set a schedule, buy vehicles, buy fuel, staff a customer support team, make websites, apply for funding, submit reports to their funders, and so much more.
Smaller agencies tend to have a harder time getting information about new technologies. Every vendor wants to pitch a big agency like MARTA or the MBTA, while a tiny operator might have to get information secondhand from their bigger neighbor agencies, and will certainly have a harder time negotiating for custom features. Consider scheduling. Every time a transit system updates its schedule, it has to build a plan that precisely interweaves drivers, vehicles, and routes. Drivers need breaks, vehicles need to be refuelled, and coordinated transfers have to align. Bigger agencies buy software to handle these complicated dependencies and rules. These tools are either unaffordable or overbuilt for smaller agencies, and many plan their schedules manually with spreadsheets.
This expo in San Diego was a treat because it catered to these smaller agencies, showcasing a little bit of everything – a bus "roadeo" showing off new vehicles, fare validators, real-time arrival screens, even mosaics for station art, non-emergency medical transport, and of course scheduling software. And the attendees were engaged, each bringing their ideas, challenges, and passion for serving their home communities.
CTAA itself also operates a technical resource program called the National Center for Applied Transit Technology, or N-CATT. The key word with N-CATT is practical – they hosted training sessions on how to design technology procurements and how to fulfill federal reporting requirements. These well-attended sessions helped remind us that while the people working in transit may be motivated by passion, the actual day-to-day work is highly prescriptive.
Other information sessions, hosted by either the FTA or vendors, rounded out the speaking program.
Jawnt is a transportation technology company that wants to make it easier for people to ride sustainable transportation. For the most part, this means helping employers offer subsidized and pre-tax commuter benefits, which makes transit more affordable for employees. We advise transit agencies to design institutional pass programs that drive ridership recovery. We also work directly with transit agencies to staff their employer programs, preserving limited agency capacity and offering a best-in-class experience for employers and employees alike.
But from another perspective, Jawnt is an eligibility verification platform. We integrate with employers, schools, and community benefit organizations of all sizes and technical sophistication to understand who’s eligible. With emerging fare payment technologies like contactless and open loop, transit agencies are interested in being able to securely manage access to eligibility-based products like student passes.
At the same time, agencies are also becoming more ambitious about pass products themselves. If you’re going to go through all the trouble of distributing a transit pass to a student or a low-income resident, wouldn’t it be great if that pass also connected them to your local scootershare, bike shops, and even ridehailing? Jawnt Pass, Jawnt’s commuter debit card, offers this flexibility and control to employers who want to offer post-tax benefits, so why not offer the same to other transit riders?
Have a question about eligibility verification, especially on open loop? Or Universal Basic Mobility? Subscribe to The Gateway, our special quarterly newsletter just for transit agencies. Or schedule a time to chat with our team.
