What makes a smart card smart?
As I said earlier, the new fare system METRO will be voting on this Thursday really consists of two parts: new technology and a new fare structure. And while it makes sense to change fare structure at the same time as changing technology, neither is dependent on the other.
And whatever one may think of the fare policies, the new technology makes sense.
A “smart card” is a card with microchip and an antenna inside. That means it can store just about any sort of information, and it can read that information to a sensor without actually touching it.
Here’s how it will work:
You buy a smart card at a METRO ride store, a transit center, a light rail station, or from about 1,000 supermarkets and convenience stores. METRO’s smart card will be stored value card, so you can buy $5 worth of rides for $5, $10 for $10, or, thanks to a volume discount, $55 for $50. When new bus fareboxes are installed in 2007, you’ll be able to buy on board the bus, too.
When boarding a bus, you pass the card by a reader mounted next to the door. It deducts the fare from the value of the card and records your boarding on the card. If you transfer to a second bus, you flash your card again. But this time, the reader sees that you just boarded another bus, realizes this is a transfer, and doesn’t charge you anything.
On light rail, the reader is on the platform (they’re already in place — look for one next to each ticket machine). You flash your card before boarding, as soon as you get to the station. The METRO police who conduct random fare inspections will have portable readers to confirm you paid. (Houston will be the first city to use smart cards on light rail like this.)
When you run out of money on your card, you can refill it with more money at a light rail vending machine or at 450 of those 1000 outlets. Or, of course, you can buy a new card.
The advantages? No fishing for change. No paper transfers. No need to slide your card through a slot, and thus quicker boarding. Several cities have adopited smart cards — Boston, Atlanta, London, Hong Kong — and many more are on the way. So it should work, and I assume METRO will be doing enough testing to make sure of that.
But, you might ask, if smart cards are so smart why is METRO getting rid of day passes and monthly passes and so on? The answer is that smart cards are perfectly capable of storing passes, and in many cities they do. In fact, London’s Oyster card does that one better and automatically caps the amount you spend on fares avery day, so that you pay no more than a day pass even if you didn’t decide to get a day pass that morning.
So don’t mistake technology for fare structure: the new cards have the smarts to collect all sorts of fares. Fare structures are about deciding how to spread the cost of transit among different sorts of riders and the tax-paying public. That’s another discussion; let’s hold it for another post. Meanwhile, visit the forums to see what others have to say.