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The Chicago Transit Board has approved an ordinance to permit the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to use online reverse auctioning as a competitive process to purchase goods and services.

The real-time bidding process is designed to encourage competitive bid pricing by having pre-approved vendors submit lower prices to outbid competitors within a set auction timeframe, CTA officials said in a prepared statement.

In a reverse auction bid vendors submit all other requirements of the bid package except for the price. The price is finalized during the auction, in which vendors have allotted time to under bid each other.

The process “can help yield lower prices on goods and services than those submitted through current procurement processes,” said CTA President Forrest Claypool.