CamTran Goes Cashless in July, Joining a National Tap-to-Pay Wave

The Cambria County Transit Authority (CamTran) will stop accepting cash on its Johnstown, Pennsylvania buses on July 1, moving every rider onto a reloadable tap card or the CamTran Pay smartphone app. The change retires fare boxes that are nearly 30 years old and pushes the small agency onto the same account-based fare technology that big-city systems adopted years ago.

Robert Johnson, CamTran’s chief operations officer, describes the new system as “tap and go.” For riders who pay with coins, it adds a step. They have to load a card or the app before boarding, because the driver’s farebox will no longer take their money.

What Changes on CamTran Buses in July

CamTran Pay covers two options, a reloadable smart card and a phone app, and both let riders buy anything from a single-day fare to a 30-day pass. The card works like a prepaid balance. You top it up, then tap a validator when you board. The app links to a bank account or another payment method and lets riders pay straight from the phone.

The trigger was hardware as much as ambition. CamTran’s fare boxes are reaching the end of their service life and were due for replacement no matter what payment method the agency kept. “This presented a good opportunity to implement a more modernized payment system,” Johnson said. Swapping aging machines for cloud-connected validators costs roughly what new fare boxes would have, while adding data and pass flexibility the old equipment never offered.

Riders have been getting the message for weeks. Ads run on the buses, posters sit in shelters, and QR codes inside each vehicle point to the sign-up page. A social-media campaign started in May, and flyers went out to the Cambria County Library and to Johnstown’s public housing communities.

The Tap-to-Pay Wave Finally Reaches Small-City Transit

CamTran is late, and it knows it. “And we are one of the last to make the switch,” Johnson said. Bigger Pennsylvania systems in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia moved years ago, and so did smaller counterparts in State College and Washington County.

The national numbers show how fast the rest of the country moved. Mastercard reported a 37% year-over-year jump in transit tap-to-pay boardings, riders using a card already in their wallet. In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority ended MetroCard sales on January 1 as it finishes the rollout of OMNY (One Metro New York, its contactless tap-to-pay system). Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) watched its Tap-n-Ride users climb to 13,305 in January from 9,153 a month earlier, per the agency’s own Tap-n-Ride adoption update. Across California, transit officials expect contactless or fare-free options to cover about 95% of trips within a year, up from under a quarter at the start of 2025.

One distinction matters under the hood. The biggest systems are moving to open-loop payment, where you tap your own bank card or phone wallet directly at the door. CamTran, like most smaller agencies, is using a closed-loop, account-based model. Riders use a CamTran-issued card or its app, and the fare math runs in the cloud rather than on the card itself.

How Modeshift Got Account-Based Fares Into Rural Budgets

A transit authority serving a city of fewer than 19,000 residents can now run the same kind of system as Denver because of how the software is sold. CamTran’s platform comes from Modeshift, a vendor that runs account-based fare collection as a cloud service on Microsoft Azure. The company says it supported about 71 million trips across roughly 60 transit agencies in 2025, most of them the rural and mid-size systems that legacy fare-box vendors tended to skip.

The economics are what changed. The platform is hardware-agnostic and media-agnostic, which means it can run account-based ticketing on existing equipment, and riders can validate with a card, a phone, a smartwatch, or a contactless bank card. That lets a small agency avoid the heavy upfront capital project that once made modern fare collection a big-city luxury. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the vendor says one operator reached 30% mobile-app adoption in under four weeks. Newer features added last year include fare capping, which automatically stops charging a rider once daily or weekly spending hits the price of a pass.

CamTran did not pick the system cold. The authority already works with Modeshift through its partner rabbittransit, which runs the scheduled-ride Medical Assistance Transportation Program (MATP, a state program that gets eligible residents to medical appointments) in Cambria County on the same platform. That existing relationship made the choice an easy one, Johnson said, since drivers, dispatch, and back-office staff were already touching the technology.

The Cash Riders Left at the Edge of the Switch

Going cashless carries a known cost, and it falls on the people least able to absorb it. About 5.4% of U.S. households were unbanked in 2019, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), with higher rates among low-income, older, and disabled riders. Portland State University researchers, in research on cashless fare exclusion, found that a large share of bus riders still pay cash at the farebox and that going cashless can push cost and effort onto exactly those passengers.

CamTran built in a partial answer. Its tap cards are reloadable with cash in person, so a rider without a bank account or a smartphone can walk into the Bus Stop Shop and top up. “You can just walk in and say, ‘Hey, I want to put $20 on this,'” Johnson said. The catch is geography. That counter sits at 551 Main Street in downtown Johnstown, so a cash rider has to get there and stay topped up rather than paying as they step on the bus.

• 5.4% of U.S. households were unbanked in 2019, per the FDIC
• About 10% of U.S. adults lack a bank account or credit card
• Roughly 30% of bus riders nationally still pay cash onboard

Some riders are insulated. Anyone 65 or older keeps riding free with a state-issued senior card and needs no account at all. Reduced-fare customers and students get no such pass. They have to sign up by June 30 to keep their discount once the legacy fares retire.

Signing Up Before the Free-Pass Deadline

CamTran is pushing riders to set up accounts early, and it is dangling an incentive. Anyone who registers before June 12 gets a free single-day transit pass. There are three ways to do it:

1. Online: visit the CamTran Pay sign-up page or scan a QR code inside any CamTran bus to download the app.
2. In person: go to the Transit Center Bus Stop Shop at 551 Main Street, Johnstown, where staff help set up accounts and hand out smart cards.
3. By phone: call 814-535-5526 or 1-800-252-3889, option 2, to have a customer-service representative create the account.

Signing up now is the most important step riders can take. CamTran Pay is designed to make transit more convenient, accessible and seamless. Getting set up early will ensure a smooth transition for every rider.

That is Rose Lucey-Noll, CamTran’s executive director, who is set to retire this summer as the board runs an in-house search for her successor. The calendar she is racing is short. Legacy fares work through June 30, the free-pass offer ends June 12, and CamTran Pay goes live next month. The authority counted 214 sign-ups by Monday afternoon. The cash fareboxes come out July 1.

Frequently Asked Questions

When do CamTran buses stop accepting cash?

CamTran Pay launches in July, and the cash fareboxes come off the buses on July 1. Riders can keep using legacy paper fares through June 30.

Do I need a smartphone to ride CamTran?

No. Riders can use a reloadable CamTran Pay smart card instead of the app, and the card can be loaded with cash in person at the Bus Stop Shop on Main Street.

Can I still pay with cash on CamTran?

Not on the bus itself once the switch happens. You can still use cash to load a CamTran Pay card at the Transit Center Bus Stop Shop, 551 Main Street, Johnstown, then tap to ride.

Do senior riders need to sign up?

No. Riders 65 and older continue to ride free with their state-issued senior card and do not need a CamTran Pay account.

How do students and reduced-fare riders keep their discount?

They must create a CamTran Pay account by June 30. Reduced-fare benefits do not carry over automatically when the legacy fare system is retired.