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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on September 27, 2012 at 7:12am

The article specified only CTA and Pace, not Metra. 

While the debit account could add flexibility to make its use on Metra more feasible, this would still mean that Metra would have to invest $$$ in scanners and presumably require people to scan in at the start of their trips and out at the end (as on BART in the SF Bay area) so that the correct amount would be deducted from their cards.  This would mean some type of enclosure and multiple scanners at each station, where there is currently no enclosure or fencing of any kind at many stations = major expense.  That would be a significant hindrance to its implementation by Metra, IMO.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Curcio on September 27, 2012 at 7:25am

Although the article says it will only be implemented for CTA and PACE, it mentions the possibility of something like this for Metra:

 

"The CTA and the Regional Transportation Authority are leading an effort to
create an open fare system in which bank-issued cards and universal transit
cards will be accepted on CTA, Pace and Metra.

The RTA system faces a
2015 deadline to fully implement an integrated fare system. Part of the
challenge is including Metra, which is slowly modernizing its antiquated
fare-collection system that still involves conductors punching paper tickets and
passes.

In addition, Metra fares are based on distance traveled, while
CTA and Pace charge flat fares and provide discounted transfers."

 

Your assessment of the likelihood of it being implemented seems valid, however.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on September 27, 2012 at 9:06am

+1

Cameron Puetz said:

With the 2015 deadline approaching, I was surprised to see the CTA and Pace roll out something new without Metra. Hopefully Metra is close to buying in, but needs to work out some details or wants CTA/Pace to iron out the bugs before an announcement is made. It would be a waste if the CTA and Pace rolled out this system in 2013, and then something replaced it in 2015 to get Metra on board.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on September 27, 2012 at 9:10am

I think the creation of a fare card that's also usable at coffee shops and other places will increase the popularity of transit cards. If the majority of fares are paid by touchless transactions, it will definitely speed up bus boarding and station entry - as long as cards and scanners are working properly, which doesn't always happen now.

The downside of this is thousands more cards that will be appealing to credit card RFID thieves. This problem has existed for several years and has exploded in the last 2 years. My inside source at CPD tells me this has become a HUGE problem - something that's gotten little coverage from the media. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/01/30/hackers-demo-s...

Could you picture someone walking through a CTA train, going from car to car, using an RFID scanner to steal people's info from the new cards?  Unless they implement this with reasonable security measures, that could be a possibility.  We need to ask CTA and Pace to do this rollout right, so this doesn't become an immediate problem.

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