Case USA45: How a City Transit Authority Mistook Mobile Ticketing Apps for Enterprise Architecture Progress
- Sunil Dutt Jha
- Aug 7
- 1 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
Overview:
This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how transit agencies have mislabeled front-end upgrades as “Enterprise Architecture reform.”
A recurring pattern is treating mobile ticketing as proof of architectural maturity. Riders could purchase and validate fares on their phones — yet the enterprise structure linking scheduling, fare policy, revenue management, and service reliability was never modeled.
P1–P6 Insight Preview:
Mobile ticketing improved customer-facing processes (P2) and components (P4), but lacked alignment to transit strategy (P1) and integrated system behavior (P3).
Business ops (P6) still reconciled revenue manually; tech ops (P6) maintained separate systems for tickets, schedules, and capacity.
Role Disconnects:
CEO/Transit GM: “We’ve gone digital for riders” — but backend systems remain disconnected.
CIO: “Fare purchases are now mobile” — yet service planning isn’t integrated.
Sales Head (Rider Engagement): “Mobile tickets boost adoption” — but data can’t drive scheduling decisions.
Chief EA: “We built an app, not an enterprise”
Head of Fare Systems: “I can sell the ticket, but can’t match it to the right seat availability”
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