In early 2000 the ATR Institute (ATRI) and the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT) working with the New Mexico Human Services Department (NMHSD) and the New Mexico Department of Labor provided the State Legislature, Welfare-to-Work Interim Committee with an overview of their preliminary concepts of utilizing smart card technology for rural transit providers for boarding and accounting for human service transit passengers. The CRRAFT (Client Referral, Ridership, and Financial Tracking) and the ICTransit Card (Intelligent Coordinated Transit Card) systems were developed for use in rural New Mexico transit agencies that were subgrantees for the NMDOT. Both systems were conceptualized to fully capitalize on the federal and state mandates for moving toward coordinated human service transportation between agencies and to achieve more efficient services with shared funding resources.

The project is meant to address issues associated with coordinating human services transportation and improving public transit in rural areas. With the use of advanced transportation systems applications, problems of integration between public transit systems and agency transportation funders can be approached on a systemic basis.

Both the CRRAFT software and the ICTransit Card were designed to comply with the National ITS and the New Mexico Information Technology (IT) architecture efforts.