When two months becomes a year: Halifax Transit's long road to a ticketing app

Halifax's new app for bus and ferry tickets has made travelling around the city easier for thousands of people since it launched in November. But municipal staff originally expected it to arrive long before then. 

New documents show the delays and miscommunications behind the scenes that led to staff moving expectations of when the app would go live again, and again, and again.

In July 2020, Halifax council gave transit staff the green light to look for a company to deliver an electronic fare system where people could pay for tickets via an app on their smartphone.

Staff eventually settled on Masabi, a U.K.-based company with extensive experience rolling out these systems around the world, as the best option.

Council voted to award Masabi the contract on July 12, 2022, with a total budget of about $1.6 million. The first phase would be an app, with a second phase involving on-board validators — a device that would scan phones — coming months later.

Marc Santilli, Halifax Transit manager of technical services, told councillors at the time that Masabi usually took about four months for this kind of work. But, he said, the company had assured them it could cut it down.

"Our goal is to get this in place as quick as possible. Realistically, I think it'll be at least a couple of months, but we will push as quick as we can," Santilli said.

But that didn't happen. Transit staff said publicly in October 2022, and then again in December, they were finalizing contract details and expected work to start soon.

Instead, final negotiations between Halifax and Masabi stretched on for months. The contract was signed in April 2023.

Both sides then hammered out the schedule and scope of work.

In July, Masabi said it would take about four months to deliver the app — which prompted Dave Reage, the executive director of Halifax Transit, to book an "urgent meeting" with Masabi.

"This is much longer than we had expected and than what is reasonable in my view," Reage wrote in a July 24 email to the project team with the municipality.

Work begins

That "escalation" meeting with staff and Masabi happened July 27, and then the work finally began. Everyone was planning for an Oct. 9 launch date.

But through early August, this sped-up schedule led to issues. Halifax staff scrambled to provide technical information that Masabi needed, but missed an Aug. 8 deadline.

Masabi sent Halifax an official notice of delay on Aug. 23. The company said because Halifax had missed the deadline, it had to push the launch out about two weeks to Oct. 23.

The letter said that to meet the compressed schedule, "both Halifax and Masabi were required to move very quickly on all aspects of the project."

Emails show transit staff then scrambled to take back a memo the municipality's chief administrative officer was about to send about the timing of the app.

Just a day later, Reage appeared before the city's transportation standing committee where he said it would likely be the fall before the app arrived. But, he did not share details about the delay or staff's role in missing a deadline.

Emails show Halifax was looking for a new project manager two days later, and the original one was replaced soon after.

Work appeared to go smoothly over the remaining few weeks, as staff and Masabi worked toward an early November launch.

On Nov. 2, the app arrived in Google and Apple stores — about a year and three months after the contract was awarded.

Masabi has not responded to CBC's request for comment. The Halifax municipality declined a CBC request to interview transit staff, but sent responses via email.

Spokesperson Brynn Budden said although the app took longer than expected, quality is "crucial" with so many people depending on the app.

"We're seeing the benefits of that quality now, with thousands of people using the app on a daily basis with minimal issues," Budden said. "Time is a very small piece of a major project with so many moving parts."

More than 40,000 downloads

Budden said the municipality learned the public's appetite for this type of technology "is much larger than expected." 

Halifax said the app has seen 41,000 downloads as of Jan.31, 2024. In a public survey about HFXGO, 83 per cent of respondents reported they were satisfied or very satisfied with the app, Budden said.

The second phase of the project is now rolling out, as Halifax Transit installs hundreds of on-board validators so people can soon scan their app. Documents state they should be active by mid-February.

Eventually transit users will be able to tap a debit or credit card on the screens, but there's no public timeline for that yet.