Supporting the California Integrated Travel Project (Cal-ITP)

Realized in United States

Rebel has supported the State of California in delivering Cal-ITP, a statewide initiative aimed at creating a modern, integrated, and equitable public transportation experience across more than 300 transit agencies.

The challenge

California’s public transportation system is highly fragmented, making travel difficult for riders, costly for agencies, and vulnerable to declining ridership. With over 300 transit agencies serving a diverse population and geography, the State needed to improve user experience, affordability, and accessibility while reducing emissions. The challenge was to enable statewide integration – across payments, data, and customer experience – without imposing a one-size-fits-all solution, while also fostering private-sector innovation and ensuring solutions could be adopted by agencies of all sizes.

Since 2019, Rebel has supported Caltrans and partner agencies in shaping, launching, and scaling Cal-ITP through a structured, ecosystem-based approach that combines strategy, market development, and implementation support.

Rebel conducted extensive ecosystem assessments and market soundings to identify innovations in transit payments, multimodal trip planning, and discount eligibility verification. This included scanning global markets, engaging private-sector technology providers, and identifying international best practices, governance models, and gaps in California’s mobility ecosystem. These insights helped define the State’s role and informed strategies to catalyze market solutions rather than build bespoke systems.

Rebel then supported feasibility studies and demonstration projects for key statewide services, including contactless open-loop payments, transit vehicle data collection, and digital identity services for transit. Rebel developed business cases, clarified roles across the ecosystem, designed viable interventions, and launched pilot projects to test concepts, generate evidence, and prepare solutions for scale.

To accelerate adoption, Rebel supported statewide procurements and market development. This included helping Caltrans and the Department of General Services design and award Merchant Services Agreement Framework Contracts, enabling transit agencies to rapidly and competitively procure payment hardware and software. Rebel continues to support additional procurements and market development across related domains, such as bikeshare, electric vehicle charging, and tolling.

Throughout the program, Rebel played a leading role in stakeholder engagement, building collaboration across local agencies, private providers, and state and federal partners. Rebel also advised on program governance and system architecture, helping Cal-ITP evolve as a modular, scalable platform that can grow over time.