Tri-Rail, the commuter rail service connecting Palm Beach and Broward Counties with Miami-Dade County, will be the first transit agency to join in the new South Florida regional system, giving Floridians the ability to use one smart fare card to travel on both systems. Palm Tran and Broward County Transit are expected to join later.

Tri-Rail’s transaction monitoring, processing, settlement and reporting will be handled by the Miami-Dade Transit through the back-office system of Cubic’s Nextfare open software and hardware platform.

Nextfare integrates a business management system and passenger devices for smart card issuing, processing and validating. The open design enables multiple agencies in a region to share resources while keeping all proprietary information separate and secure, giving agencies a way to reduce costs.

Cubic’s Nextfare systems are in use are the greater Los Angeles area, Atlanta and Brisbane, Australia.

The SFRTA system will process smart cards and printed tickets and will comprise 76 ticket vending machines, 85 station validators, six ticket office machines, and 60 handheld units.

The SFRTA-Miami Dade Transit interoperability will create the first multi-agency regional system that is compliant with the American Public Transportation Association’s Contactless Fare Media Standard that has been adopted in public transport as the national standard.