New fare cards offer peek into Metro's cashless future

New fare cards offer peek into Metro's cashless future

At least that s what Southwest Ohio s Metro bus transit agency is betting as it restructures how riders pay to travel around the region.Rolling out  stored-value cards preloaded with $10, $20 or $30 and later, more sophisticated  smart cards, are part of Metro s push to fully use technology available with newer fareboxes on its nearly 350 buses.

With stored-value cards, a rider will tell the driver his destination and insert his card in the farebox, which will deduct the fare and print the remaining balance on the card.Smart cards  which are going through pilot tests now  are embedded with a microchip that can be tapped against a reader on the farebox that automatically deducts riders fares based on the destination.

 Our customers are really just looking for easier options than carrying (tokens or cash), Metro spokeswoman Sallie Hilvers said Wednesday.  The new electronic fare media offers advantages. Metro will begin selling the new stored-value cards in $10 denominations up to $30, and may allow more money to be added to the cards in the future, Hilvers said.

She said the cards can be used to buy transfers and pay for multiple fares. They will not replace cash or 30-day passes accepted on buses.Initially, stored-value card sales will be limited to Metro s downtown sales office at 120 E. Fourth St. at the Mercantile Building. Metro also plans on installing a 24-hour ticket vending machine at its Government Square transit hub.

Eventually, Metro will offer riders the option of smart cards that can be loaded online, in any amount at any time.Transit agencies in Chicago, New York and other cities around the country have used cashless systems for years. Hilvers said the agency  part of the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority  struggled to find money to upgrade 17-year-old fareboxes on buses that could accept newer payment options.

The newer boxes have been installed since November 2011, in a $4.5 million project funded 80 percent by the Federal Transit Administration. They collect $22 million in fares annually and represent about 27 percent of the transit agency s operating revenue, Metro says.Metro has been testing smart cards over the past several months with workers at a small group of companies, Cincinnati Public Schools students and Metro employees.

This fall, smart cards also will be available for Fare Deal riders, a program for eligible riders 65 and older, Medicare recipients or people with disabilities. The cards will be available to the general public after kinks are worked out, Hilvers said. The technology is new to us, and we want to make sure we re doing it correctly, she said.

She said Metro might issue free cards as an initial promotion. Metro is still trying to secure money for software to allow customers to be able to reload smart cards via online payment.

They aren t systemwide showstoppers, of the kind that scotched the planned launch of the smart-card fare-payment system a year ago. But they can be annoying.

Technical experts are still trying to figure out why Presto users boarding some express buses close to downtown are sometimes charged extra for their rides, for instance. Board an express bus in the distant suburbs for a quick ride into the city and you re supposed to pay extra; board closer,You can add the car led and fluorescent kits to your car, truck, motorcycle, boat etc. in, say at Hurdman station if you re going downtown from the east or south, and it s supposed to be a regular fare. Presto users are occasionally hit with the surcharge even when they aren t supposed to be.

Strictly speaking, this isn t a Presto problem: it s an error that begins in the GPS system that tracks where buses are and then feeds the information to the Presto reader that debits a rider s account. But a bus driver would know where his or her bus is and know not to demand a payment from a passenger; the Presto system just charges the money and you find out it s confused only when your account is already dinged and the reader shows you what you ve just paid.

 We had a number back a while ago  the person gets compensated, obviously  the numbers have gone down because we ve implemented a fix, said David Pepper, the senior OC Transpo manager in charge of customer service. But yes, he conceded, it does sometimes still happen.

Reimbursing customers who complain should be easy, Pepper said, because the Presto system generates an easily readable record that would show the problem.  We would see that they boarded at Hurdman on an express bus and that should be good, Pepper said.

Fare disputes aren t new to OC Transpo, of course, but Presto adds a layer of technology to a fairly simple transaction and that means another layer of potential failure. Ninety-nine per cent or more of the system s taps have been glitchless, OC Transpo reports. The other one per cent ... well, those failures can be confusing and inexplicable, at least in the moment: tap a card that s been working all day, the reader says it s invalid, and you either have to pay cash or start walking.

 The nice thing about Presto is there s a total electronic trail, so if someone did have proper fare, it was properly loaded, and the card was acting up, we can examine that and we can, as we have, we ll make the customer whole again, in terms of the fare, Pepper said.

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