Development Of An Electronic Fare Collection System Using Stationary Tap-Out Devices

The peculiar nature of emerging economies means that established technology must be developed with the constraints and limitations of these locations in view. This paper presents the development of an Electronic Fare Collection system using Contactless smart cards. Electronic fare collection system are commonly integrated with public transit networks such as the bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) services in major cities worldwide. However, in deploying such systems in an emerging economy like Nigeria, unique consideration has to be given with regards to power management, robustness and availability. The system developed consists of a mobile tap-in device connected to a bus, a stationary tap-out device to be situated at a specific bus stop and a web server on the cloud for coordination and off site monitoring. The stationary tap-out device used consists of a proximity card reader (or an RFID reader) connected to a computing unit linked with a display, outdoor power provision (source) and data transmission capability. A program was developed to capture data from randomly applied proximity cards (or RFID cards) and to transmit same periodically to a remote location for use by the system. The system developed is able to sustain itself for a long period of time from available power supply, it also proves robust enough from a software and hardware perspective. Lastly its availability is proven even when data transmission capability proves erratic