Saskatoon Transit to add mobile ticketing as fare option

Saskatoon Transit is ready to roll out a new service that will allow people to buy bus tickets or passes on their cell phone, and then tap to pay their fare when they climb onboard. 

"It's been asked for for a long time," said Jim McDonald, director of Saskatoon Transit. 

Saskatoon Transit is working with Masabi, a company described as a "global leader in mobile ticketing," to develop the new cell phone service for its customers. The vision is that the new service will be melded into the existing transit app. 

Pre-pandemic, this sort of announcement would likely have been welcomed as a modern convenience, but it clearly has some greater interest now because it allows transit users to do more without having to come into contact with people, or surfaces. 

"We could see everything installed as early as the end of 2020," promised McDonald. 

In the hands of bus riders by mid-2021

What McDonald was referring to is the hardware — the electronic fare readers that will be installed across the entire Saskatoon Transit fleet. Putting the power of this new mobile ticketing system into the palm of your hand will take a little longer.  

"There will be some lucky people that we're going to use as a trial base and that's just to improve the system and make sure it actually works, before we push it out to the rest of the public," said McDonald. 

In the meantime, Saskatoon Transit is undergoing a long-term fare review, and it's likely the results of that planning — along with the new mobile payment — will be rolled out in tandem sometime in the first half of 2021. 

The new system will not supersede more traditional forms of payment. Transit riders will still be able to use the existing smart cards or cash to pay their fare.