Cross Bay Ferry

The Cross-Bay Ferry is a regional effort designed to reduce road traffic and congestion between St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida. Operated by HMS Ferries Inc., the ferry system serves more than 50,000 customers each year.

Challenges

The Cross-Bay Ferry began as a temporary route during certain times of the year. As the transportation service caught on amongst residents and ridership continued to grow, the ferry system wanted to get more sophisticated with its fare collection and boarding process. The transit service came to Americaneagle.com for a cutting edge ticketing solution using myCloudFare.

Solutions

With myCloudFare, Americaneagle.com planned and developed all hardware and software, in addition to creating iOS and Android mobile apps for customers of Cross-Bay Ferry. To allow for greater self-service, a customer web portal was implemented that allowed riders to store payment information and make frequent transactions. Both the mobile apps and customer web portal can be used to purchase tickets, make reservations, and look up schedules and track ferries.

myCloudFare also powers a separate app for the use of the ticket inspector to scan and redeem tickets. All of this is connected to an account-based central system.

Customers can also purchase tickets at the ticket booths equipped with Star Micronics printers and cash registers and Elo I-Series tablet-based retail point of sale terminals. The project builds upon successful ticketing systems created by Americaneagle.com for other ferry systems, including Pierce County Ferry in Tacoma, WA and Channel Cat Water Taxi in Moline, IL.

"The new ferry service is addressing the issue of congestion on our roads and particularly across the bridge. Since our goal was to increase efficiency, a reliable, quick ticketing system was essential to the success of this project. We are exceptionally pleased with the work Americaneagle.com has done not only on this ticketing system, but across multiple ferry ticketing systems operated by HMS as well."

Mathew Miller
Vice President - HMS Ferries, Inc