UTFS Financial Management Committee Meeting Minutes

Chung-Chung Tam (Fin Mgmt Chair), CTA

Darshana Patel, CTA

Rick Barrett, (Fin Mgmt Vice-Chair), Quattran

Ola Nowlin, CTA

Bob Murray (Sys WG Co-chair), BART

Craig Maxey, WMATA

Barney Louie, BART

Dave Phelps, APTA

Lisa Bucci, S&B

Tim Weisenberger, Volpe

Resolution of the IP Policy issues continues to be a "work in progress", but significant steps forward occurred last week. As background, the draft prepared in the spring was acceptable only with great reluctance to ERG and unacceptable to Cubic. This was reported to the Rail CEO’s in Miami on June 6.

There have been several discussions with Cubic to resolve the problem, culminating in an all day meeting last Thursday, Aug. 5 attended by Tom Parker, Tony Kouneski and Dave. The result, APTA believes, is that there is now have the basis of an accommodation. The nature of the accommodation would not change the provisions of the IP Policy, but rather is in the scope of the applicability of the Policy. The results of the meeting and the accommodation are being documented.

Once everyone is in agreement on the outcome of the 8/5 meeting, the following are the next steps:

1. APTA will call a face to face meeting approximately the second week of September to review the agreement, and the IP Policy with key stakeholders (S&B, Cubic, ERG), Task Force Leadership, senior APTA staff, and others as deemed appropriate.
2. Assuming the policy is acceptable to all, it will be presented to the Rail CEO’s committee Oct. 10 in Atlanta and get their permission to implement the policy on an interim basis
3. Submit the Policy to a formal TF ballot.
4. Format implementation.

The interim implementation will include letters of acknowledgement from all UTFS participants.

The PANYNJ hosted a RIS demonstration on Aug 5th. The demo showed interoperability of multiple ISO-compliant cards and multiple readers from multiple vendors. All transactions were within 250 millisecond. There will be another demo on Aug 24 at GSA in Washington DC.

TCIP Activities:

The TCIP met regarding the Fare Collection portion of TCIP on July 15th in Annapolis, MD. The TCIP work will have a significant impact on fare collection. The focus of the meeting was on the concept of operations rather that the technical detail of the data flows. The group also defined all data elements of fare collection. The TCIP document will be distributed in September

There is a need for an increase in vendor participation. Currently only GFI is active.

Tam has presented the option to absorb the TCIP fare collection work into the APTA RMC and/or UTFS. Tam will request a face-to-face meeting to discuss this option. One issue to address is that TCIP also addresses maintenance and alarm data in addition to fare collection data. Tam is still awaiting a decision from TCIP leaders on this issue.

The RMC will meet on Oct. 10th at 2:30PM at the APTA Annual Meeting in Atlanta. In the time frame of Sep 20-23, the RMC will pursue a workshop with CEN representatives regarding vetting the CEN Interoperable Fare Management document through the UTFS program. This will be beneficial for the WP4 team as they have reviewed the IFM document and may be able to use it as a baseline document. This would fit into the RMC’s Standards Oversight Sub-group activities. This sub-group will have a teleconference on either Aug 11th or Aug 18th (more likely date) to discuss strategy for the group to organize efforts to manage the multiple standards that pertain to transit. The next ISO meeting will be Oct 12-14th in Beijing, China.

Additionally, Tam attended the Aug. 5th RIS demonstration held at PANYNJ. The demo was very successful and showed interoperability of multiple cards- Full-feature, Limited-use, and Memory logic ISO Type A and ISO Type B cards together with ISO-compliant readers manufactured by various vendors. All cards and readers interoperated within 250 msec. Tim added that over 130 people viewed the demo and there will be another demo on Aug. 24th at GSA in Washington D.C.

The BP WG business issues document is still in final edit at APTA. No schedule for completion is known.

The Magnetics WG having trouble achieving quorums at meetings. Tim W. will work with Rich Lobron to send individual email to WG distribution confirming their desire to participate.

Bob Murray, supported by Barney and Ola led a report of activities:

David deKozan drafted a letter to Tom Parker that gives a WG status update. Dave Phelps stated that this letter was hand-delivered to Tom on Aug 5. Tam, Rick, Leisa and Bob had reviewed and commented, but none of them had seen the final version that was submitted. Bob stated that the letter states that the group must take care in the WP4 scope to complete work and to that end have limited the scope to the data exchange between the central system and the regional system. Tam stated that the IP policy will be an issue in the WPs. Tam directed Tim to include the letter in the meeting minutes. Rick asked that Tim also send it to the TF leadership prior to their call on 8/12.

WP1- close to finalizing the specification. Still must discuss limited use technology and the card numbering scheme. With respect to limited use, the issues under discussion are how small the memory can be and what data elements are needed.

WP3- The last call was cancelled. Participation has been an issue and Gary Yamamura has taken on the lead in the last section that needs major work. The team is still on track for a Dec. 04 completion.

WP4- BAH report sent on Aug. 2. Leisa forwarded to appropriate leaders. Both the WMATA doc and the Translink doc are not included in the final report due to NDA issues. Barney added that a sub-group was created to examine the RIS, Cubic CID and ERG documents to evaluate their use in the development of a data exchange document.

Bob Murray noted that the lack of an IP policy could impact the Cubic and ERG documents already submitted.

Tam wrapped up the discussion by stating that the WP1 doc will be completed soon and a voting process must be in place. Walt Bonneau is asking for guidance on this issue. Tam noted that the spec is expected to be submitted to the committee for ballot approximately Sep 15. Those wishing to be eligible to vote on the committee ballot must begin attending committee calls.