To: Dr Vincent Boudreau and or the Office of the Provost

From: Nolkens Francois, Julian Castillo, Keith, Nelson

Date: 12/3/2019

Subject: Proposal for the funding of MetroCard’s for qualified City College students.

Purpose: For the advancement of effective education of students through financial funding support.

Summary

We are looking for a solution to the issue of lower income students struggling to afford transportation to CCNY. We intend to solve this problem by manufacturing and programming an electronic funds card. We intend to distribute such cards through systematic and purposeful means. They are distributed to qualified New York City and non-New York City residents who do not live in a two mile radius from the City College campus. It is a financial program funded by funds allocated by the City College of New York that will sustain itself financially after just a few years. The program will be complete with a CFO, a program lead, a contracted partnership with FleetCor and a group of ten IT technicians for technical support and management.

Introduction

For many CCNY students, the location of the campus in Harlem makes it easy and affordable to travel to school as there are many options for public transport nearby. However, for students who live outside of Manhattan and the city limits, this can cause issues. There are many systems different systems a student might take before coming onto the subway or bus, such as the Metro-North system or the Long Island Railroad. Juggling both the cost and the connections between multiple systems is a challenge for these students.

To help our team understand the challenges, Julian explained how living outside of the city made him must take the NICE bus system, before transferring to the subway at Jamaica Center. He explained how it would take him almost two hours to get to school, and the reason why he took the bus rather than the Long Island Railroad was because it the buses use the MetroCard system, which makes it cheaper and easier to use. If Julian was able to afford using the Long Island Railroad, he would be able to get to class in half the time he would normally take.

To make this solution convenient for students, we created a multipurpose I.D. card that can help students pay for and use transportation. The card will have an NFC chip to make it easier to not only pay for tickets, but to also make it future proof for when the MTA rolls out the OMNY system to replace MetroCard’s. Currently, the card will allow students to tap the vending machine to print out their tickets, but when each of these systems have their own NFC payment option, then the cards can be used directly as a ticket

This card will also be programmed in accordance with a student’s class schedule and student I.D. number, so it can also be used as identification to enter the school. On each day a student has class, the card will be preloaded with just enough funds for the student to purchase a ticket both to and from the college. These cards do not contain any funds on them on days and times students do not have class. The funds will be made available to use on the card and will expire once the students first class begins. Funds are again made accessible after the student finishes their final class. Administration will have complete logs of card activities of each specific student using their CCNY ID number. This log will contain information on the location of each use, as well as the time and date. This system will hopefully help students to focus more on their productivity at school and less on the financial burden of commuting.

Technology

We would need Computers and a small staff group to monitor CCCard activity. Contracts between contracting company FleetCor would not only include proper API operations and accounts payable, but FleetCor would be required to train  CCNY administrators on the proper API’s functionalities for operating the card, so collaboration with FleetCor for Accounts Payable software and their API capabilities is a must. We would also need to install the proper NFC chip onto the card so it can be read by the scanners

These cards make use of an NFC (Near Field Communication) Chip, which allows electronic devices to interact with each other using radio waves. Inside the card, there is encrypted data that stores information such as the number of rides left on the card and the days when the card can be used. The terminal then processes the data, and if it is valid, then it allows the student to pass through. This entire process only takes a few seconds to complete, and vastly simplifies the process of using public transportation compared to MetroCard’s. (Square)

An additional advantage that these chips have outside of their speed and convenience is their size. Most NFC chips are only a few millimeters thick and some inches long, which makes them ideal for insertion into thin plastic cards (NXP, P.4). This means that these cards can have Designs that do not need to make space for the chip on the cover, so it can act as an Identification cards as well for the CCNY students that make use of them.

Management

If this project is managed correctly, the expenses and management will cost the school little to no money. We would firstly need a program manager, with similar financial skills to a CFO (Chief Financial Officer). This person would oversee the upper managerial tasks. We would also need a program lead, to represent the program, manage the IT team and to schedule meetings, reporting on the program. As stated above, we would need a small group of IT technicians to manage card activity and to provide IT support to the card users. If we refer to Fig. 1 the estimated student enrollment at the school is 16,299, however there is not 16,299 students at the school on any given day. This is because students have classes different days and some days, they do not have class at all. On any given day we could estimate that only a third of the total enrolled will be using the cards. It brings this number down to a more manageable 5,433 students on a regular day. Friday is the least attended day and if you have ever visited the school on a Friday, this is evident. Students come from all different boroughs and even commute from New Jersey, but as stated before we are only providing funds for the MTA system. We can hire IT technicians to field calls and manage the card systems, using programs that will be provided by Fleetcor. We can hire a group of 10 IT technicians per semester and pay them a salary of 31,200 dollars for the year. We would have to hire FleetCor to manage our accounts payable and to make sure our API software’s run flawless. FleetCor charges 10 cents per swipe, so with the figures that we propose to pay them  is an estimated 32,598 dollars per year for their services.

Cost

This project itself is costly, however it can be not only self-sustaining, but profitable for the school. We will have to create a model that will not only be self-sustaining, but profitable. We do not have the data on the number of students who commute to the school, however we use figure 2 to calculate how many students live in boroughs other than Manhattan that attend the school, 12,296. This leave out 3,337 students that come from Manhattan. There are 16,299 students that are enrolled to the school. Because we do not have the number of commuters that use the subway to get to the school, we must make an educated guess to come up with a model that will be sustainable for the program. Of those 16, 299 students, not all of them commute through the subway or buses. Some of them have their personal cars, or they choose to utilize other transportation methods such as Uber and Lyft. Because of this, I think it is fair to use the figure 13,500 for our model.

It costs around 2 dollars to manufacture a credit card. We will charge students 5$ just to provide them the card. This figure brings in $67,500. We will then charge them a 10$ fee to replace their lost cards. And a $10 reactivation fee every school year. The activation fee alone brings in close to $135,000 per year for the program. We will charge a $10 monthly service fee for the cards and if this fee is not paid, cards will not work. This brings in another $1,350,000 for the program. In total we are raising $1,552,500 per year to manage the program.

Total Money Raised per year for the program. $1,552,500. The program would be able to pay for itself in less than 5 years and would not require any more outside funding.

 

Budget

Task/Payees	Price	Subtotal
FleetCor	$32,598/yr	$32,598
IT Professionals	$312,000/yr	$312,000
CFO	$80,000/yr	$80,000
Program Lead	$50,000/yr	$50,000
Office Supplies	$200,000/yr	$200,000
TOTAL		$674,598

                                                             Schedule

1. Hire CFO
2. CFO will hire program lead
3. CFO will hire 10 IT professionals and office supplies.
4. Meet with FleetCor and CCNY executives for the reviewing and signing of Contracts.
5. Produce and Manufacture Chip Cards.
6. Send out letters to qualified students.
7. Distribute Chip cards.                                                      

References:

Square. (2019). NFC Guide: All You Need to Know About Near Field Communication. Retrieved November 2, 2019, from https://squareup.com/guides/nfc.

NXP Semiconductors. (2015, June 2). PDF. NTAG213/215/216. Retrieved November 3, 2019, from https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/NTAG213_215_216.pdf

Samsung Newsroom. (2014, November 26). Everything you need to know about Samsung’s newest NFC. Retrieved November 3, 2019, from https://news.samsung.com/global/everything-you-need-to-know-about-samsungs-newest-nfc