Background
INIT Innovations in Transportation is a world market leader for integrated intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and fare collection solutions for public transit. As a turnkey supplier, INIT develops, manufactures, installs, and maintains integrated hardware and software solutions for all key tasks of public transit companies.
As part of their fare collection and revenue management solution, INIT partnered with Marathon for the development of two new, enterprise level, web-based portal systems to function as a unified and fully integrated platform for their public transport customers across the country.
With the development of this platform, INIT was aiming fill the gap in their software solution offering, through the development of these integrated, customer portals, allowing easy and streamlined access to all the benefits of their real-time, account-based fare system.
Solution
The first transit authority project was the implementation of an account-based smart card and mobile ticketing solution for the Grand Rapids metro area transportation system, “The Rapid.” Working closely with the INIT team, Marathon designed and developed these customized web application portals in Umbraco CMS because of the complex requirements, flexible customizations, and scalability needed to provide online management of transit fare accounts for two separate audiences.
One fare collection portal was developed for the public and the other for organizations to manage fare cards for their members and employees. These portals allow users to manage their fare cards, add money to their cards, schedule auto-reloads when the balance is low, and transfer balances between cards.
Each fare collection portal was designed with simplicity in mind, allowing the user to easily manage their account from anywhere. The responsive, ADA-compliant front end was developed using HTML5, CSS, and Vue.js, delivering a seamless experience across devices. The portals were integrated directly with INIT APIs for transaction processing, and the scalability of the Umbraco CMS allowed effortless content updates and flexibility for future enhancements as their needs evolved.
“INIT is proud to partner with Marathon to provide advanced fare management websites that benefit our customers, their riders, and institutional partners. Marathon knows the complete INIT solution stack which allows them to deliver value based on specific requirements for each project.”
Impact
The launch of the new web-based fare collection portals for “The Rapid” proved a huge success and was proven through one Grand Rapids institution customer’s effortless, real-time management of over 27,000 employee accounts.
As a result, Marathon and INIT have continued their partnership through the years. The team has gone on to develop and enhance their custom Umbraco fare collection portal system for many more cities across the country including Honolulu, Tampa, Portland, Seattle, Rhode Island, Houston, San Diego, Orange County, Nashville, Atlanta, and more.
Read more about these projects and our partnership with INIT:
“We have been very pleased with the fare collection portals developed by Marathon. The Institutional portal has allowed one of our largest customers to self-manage over 27,000 employees in real time. Our full launch this spring would not be successful without INIT and Marathon as our partners.”
