Universal Fare
Post by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
How many credit cards do you own? How about cards from places like Best Buy or Target? Every mid-sized or larger retail store has its own charge card, offering all sorts of discounts for you to use their card in their store. And yet, people more often than not use their own charge card instead of the store’s version.
Now how many farecards do you have? Sure for smaller agencies there isn’t such a thing. But with the advent of quick and easy (and increasingly inexpensive) farecard systems out there, more and more agencies are switching over to a card-based system. And the largest agencies? They are combining those farecards into multipasses available across several agencies all at once.
With the announcement this week of Chicago putting together a single farecard system allowing passengers access to CTA, Metra and Pace systems it sparked a thought. Seattle is doing this with its ORCA card. California’s Bay Area systems are testing out the Translink system and GO Transit, TTC and other agencies in the Toronto area are looking at creating a single farecard for multiple systems.
So, getting back to that idea, why not create a single farecard for all systems. So I can take the bus to the airport on one coast with the same card I use to take the bus to my hotel on the other coast. Would it work? Why not? If we can unify millions of riders in systems as large as CTA, why couldn’t we incorporate CTA with NY MTA or LA Metro?
I am sure there are all sorts of hands going up out there with potential obstacles, the most prevalent I am sure is who is going to pay for it. How about, each agency having different fare structures. Or this would just be confusing to our riders, they wouldn’t want to pay for something that is benefiting a different agency.
Now ask yourselves are those obstacles or objections? There is a big difference between the two. I come back to these massive population centers being able to unify all the municipalities in a region under one farecard. If they can do it regionally, why couldn’t everyone working together do it nationally. Maybe the first step in a nationwide transit system is a way for riders to pay to get on board.
At this point it doesn’t look to me as the problem is a matter of technology, but rather a lack of vision.
Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.
April 19th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Fred,
One only needs to look at the NYCT/MasterCard Paypass pilot to see the future of fare payment. The ongoing reaction to that project is how will bank cards support the concession fares required of transit (E/H and Paratransit).
The solution to the cost of the hardware is out there if agencies are willing to “privatize” fare collection. Also, APTA is developing a Universal Transit Farepayment Standard (UTFS) which was presented at the recent APTA FSP workshop in LA.
Jerry
April 19th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Well, Fred, we are behind other parts of the world on this issue. Many European cities have had region-wdie fare systems for decades. Switzerland, for many years now, has offered annual passes good on the national railways, regional railways, and local transit systems; of course, the country is about the size of MA+CT+RI. And then there are the smartcards available to pay for transit fares and a bunch of other purchases, too, in Hong Kong (octopus), London (oyster), Singapore, et. al. In the US, the Bay Area, metro Seattle, and others are working to roll out region-wide “smart” fare cards; but progress is slow. I think the US will get there, but we won’t be in the vanguard on this one.
April 20th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Fred,
Why not? My Dallas Zoo family membership is honored at zoos and aquariums all over North America, my toll tag is good on any toll road in Texas, the airports in Dallas and Houston and any parking garage in downtown Dallas! The technology is there so why shouldn’t we set up a system that simply reads the fare card and credits to the appropriate operating agency? This should go to APTA immediately as an action item.
John Landrum
Chief Operating Officer
McKinney Avenue Transit Authority
Dallas, Tx
214-727-2919 cell
April 25th, 2007 at 9:18 am
The six agencies plus two dial-a-ride systems in Ventura County, California have been using a smart card program since the early 1990’s. The card provides both a monthly and debit functions and is accepted on all systems.
For such a program to go regionally, area wide, state or national will take cooperation and shairing of information and technology.
Using transit should be as simple as posible to encourage a seamless and friendy option.
April 25th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
While your scheme is certainly technologically feasible (although massive in scale) you must take into consideration that the systems are provided by private sector companies. You would have to either get ALL transit systems to agree to contract with the same company (difficult at the very least) or convince the competing companies to share proprietary information (not a snowball’s chance…). I’ve spent the last several years involved in the Washington, DC regional Smart Card project and can tell you from experience that overcoming those obstacles, just in one metropolitan region, is a monumental task.
Mr. Harrison’s reference to the NYCT/MasterCard Paypass pilot (there is a similar pilot in the DC region) shed’s light on what I would expect to be how this issue is ultimately dealt with. Using a credit card company as the “back-end” processing system is most likely, in my opinion, how we will one day use the same card to pay for transit fares on just about any system in the country.