Sometime in the eventual future, the MTA will do away with MetroCards and move toward a tap-and-go fare payment system. When the familiar pieces of plastic with their particularly sensitive magnetic stripes go the way of the dodo, the authority will have a chance to re-imagine how we pay for our subway rides. Do we need a pay-per-ride option? How should unlimited fare cards work in this brave new word of contactless payment?

A few months ago, SAS reader Corey emailed me a question and a proposal concerning the fare structure. He asked about eliminating the pay-per-ride fare entirely and all forms of transfer. He proposed a three-tiered fare structure: Riders could pay either $5 for one day of unlimited use, $25 for seven days of unlimited use or $100 for four weeks of unlimited use. “The rationale here,” he wrote to me, “is that if you use transit to get somewhere, you’re highly likely to use it to get back.”

As long as the tap-and-go system uses the standard block-and-reconcile billing method that many e-commerce sites use, he believes it can be easy to program a flexible system that charges per use. Under this scheme, on the fifth day of use in a seven-day period, the charge would become a weekly unlimited one good for seven days from the first use, and the same would apply after the fourth weekly charge. Effectively, the user would buy discounted cards retroactively.

Corey’s reasoning, from a billing perspective is one of simplicity. This system, he writes, “eliminates complicated transfer wrangling and helps bridge the gap between the old MetroCard system and the new tap-and-go.” In essence, it’s a transition approach to billing that allows users flexibility. They should also be able to opt-in for bulk purchases from the start, but if they don’t choose to do so, they won’t get overcharged on the back end.

Corey ends his email with a question: “Can you see any flaws in this plan?” And that’s where I’m picking up his thread. I’ll leave the question open to debate, but first some thoughts.

I’m uncomfortable with doing away with pay-per-ride options entirely because it tends to discourage transit use. While many people do intend to make the return trip, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, the return trip is via automobile. Sometimes, in the case of trips to travel hubs, the return ride isn’t until after a vacation or business trip.

With an automatic payment of $5 from the get-go, users are encouraged to use as much transit as possible, but sometimes, they just don’t have a choice. The $5 rate seems high enough as an initial starting point to discourage those who need to make a quick trip infrequently even as it encourages others to make as many trips as possible frequently.

Beyond that limiting factor, though, this plan is certainly one that could be put in place fairly easily, and it shouldn’t increase most people’s transportation costs. The daily card would raise the price of a back-and-forth trip to $2.50 per entry, but the weekly option is cheaper than the current $29 card available for sale. Charging $100 for four weeks is a slight increase over the current $104 30-day card, but when fares go up in 2013, we’ll likely reach that point anyway.

When the MTA introduces a tap-and-go system, they should be able to tout an equally impressive reduction of fare collection costs. Off-the-cuff calculations reveal that fare-collection savings off as little as three cents per fare dollar will save the MTA around $50 million a year. Considering the authority’s precarious financial state, they won’t — and shouldn’t — pass those savings onto customers, but a more streamlined fare system has its benefits.

To create a better system, we must build one that encourages mass transit without overcharging for it or overburdening those who can’t pay as much but rely on the system for vital transportation needs. Corey’s proposal is certainly easier to understand than today’s menu of discounts and fare options. But is it the best we can do?

As I’m in Philadelphia for a few days this week, I’m not going to be around to cover all of the breaking subway news and snow service watch. I did, however, want to make sure that some fresh content finds its way to the site, and I’ll be running a few of my archived pieces. As the fares go up tomorrow and unlimited cards remain, thankfully, unlimited, let’s look back at how the unlimited MetroCard changed transit for the better in New York City.

When Tuesday dawned another cold, windy and rainy day, I pondered how New Yorkers ride the subway in those ugly conditions. On rainy days, the trains are damp and more crowded than usual. People who would otherwise walk or bike to their myriad destinations head underground for a ride free from rain.

Meanwhile, throughout the city, people running errands opt to duck underground as well. Instead of walking from, say, 50th St. to 40th St., the one-stop ride along the Sixth Ave. IND often calls out, and while 15 years ago, that ride would have cost $1.25, today, the Unlimited MetroCard urges you to take that one- or two-stop ride. Straphangers, in fact, get better deals on their weekly or monthly cards if they ride more frequently, and the MTA earns less per ride. In a way, it is a perverse incentive.

Today, the Unlimited MetroCard is a way of life. In January, over 50 percent of all non-student trips came from one of the four unlimited ride offerings. Yet, 12 years ago, few were aware of the looming debut of these cards that have changed the way we ride.

Gov. George Pataki first announced unlimited ride cards in early December 1997. Original plans called for a $63 30-day card, a $17 seven-day card and a $4 one-day fun pass. In a twist of history, the MTA could afford to offer these discount cards because of a surplus of tax revenue in 1997. The agency was expected to lose over $230 million on the per-ride discounts, and as riders today pay an inflation-adjusted fare that is 36 cents lower than the average fare was in 1996, this loss is still haunting the MTA today.

While the 30-day cards then — and still do today — require someone to ride at least 47 times to be a better deal than the pay-per-ride discounts, the new passes were designed to encourage use. Original MTA estimates projected 100 million more riders per year, an increase of six percent. ”The goal here,” Pataki said said to The Times, ”was very simply to empower the rider. Empower the person who takes the subway and the person who takes the bus by giving them the broadest possible range of options as to how they want to choose to use the mass transit system.”

When the unlimited cards debuted on July 4, 1998, they were an immediate hit. Even though plans for the one-day card were delayed, lines at the token booths snaked through stations, and New Yorkers were eager to take advantage of the potential savings. ”Maybe it would stop me from taking so many cabs,” one rider said at the time. ”It has to do with commitment. Once I’ve made that $17 investment up front, I see it as a free situation, rather than a $5 cab ride minus the dollar-and-a-half public transportation.”

The only down side riders could find was the original 18-minute use restriction. The unlimited ride cards could be used once system-wide every 18 minutes, and many straphangers taking short trips found themselves waiting for time to expire. Eventually, Transit agreed to reduce the limitations to their current form. Today, riders can swipe in at the same station only once every 18 minutes but can enter the system at other points before the time limit is up.

Immediately, the savings were apparent. As The Daily News noted, messenger services and frequent train riders were going to realize savings of hundreds of dollars annually. First day sales were very brisk and have continued to be for the past 12 years.

Today, the unlimited ride cards are still a great deal. As a student and frequent subway rider, my pay-per-ride cost off of the $89 monthly card is only just around $1.10 per ride. I can hop on and hop off the trains and buses as I please, and I don’t have to think twice about taking a trip we used to view as unnecessary 15 or 20 years ago. The Unlimited MetroCards changed the way we ride and interact with the system, and that was true transit innovation for New York City.

Juan Carlos Pinto's MetroCard Mona Lisa is now on display in DUMBO.

Take a look at this baby. It is a Mona Lisa MetroCard by artist Juan Carlos Pinto. The Guatemala-born artist has been working in New York City for the past ten years, and he uses non-biodegradable plastic objects as his medium. He slices, dices and pastes them to create visual images.

“The idea of using these non-biodegradable cards is to reinforce recycling and prolonging its use indefinitely while providing the artist with a source free material. It is also a way of reminding us about the danger this material can cause if left to seep into the earth,” he says on his website.

Pinto’s work is currently on display at the DIS Micro Gallery at 147 Front Street in Brooklyn. Always a sucker for a good “Mona Lisa,” I like MetroCard Che as well. Viva la fare hike revolucion.

MetroCard error messages seem to be an increasingly common phenomenon. (Photo by flickr user Triborough)

One day in the not-so-distant future, the MetroCard will die an ignoble death. Instead of an extraneous piece of plastic with a sensitive magnetic stripe, New Yorkers will wave their smart chip-enabled credit cards at a reader to pass through a swipeless entry point. It will speed of the city’s buses and eliminate the need for those annoying tics and error messages so prevalent at subway entrances.

For now, though, the MetroCard, outdated for years and clunky in its uniqueness, lives on. In his subway column today, Daily News writer Pete Donohue looks at the state MetroCard Vending Machines and finds maintenance and service lacking. As the system and technology grows older, it is, unsurprisingly, breaking down more frequently. He writes:

Transit workers have been called to repair the machines 234,170 times this year through September – approximately 870 times a day, Metropolitan Transportation Authority data show. This year, each defect went uncorrected on average 6.18 hours, up from 5.08 hours two years ago…

There are 1,648 MetroCard machines. Even with a defect, a machine regularly will still work to some degree. It might not accept dollar bills but will process a debit or credit card. It might sell MetroCards but not single-ride tickets…

You can thank those shifty-looking guys standing by the turnstiles for some of your MetroCard woes. The aptly named “swipers” swipe people through turnstiles for less than the $2.25 fare. They jam different machine components, like the bill-handling unit, to increase demand for their services. Still, even these ubiquitous scammers aren’t prolific enough to cause an average 26,000 repairs a month. Only 30% of repairs are attributed to tampering, the data show.

The machines are relatively old, and definitely cranky. They were installed about a decade ago and never replaced. They are at the edge of their “useful life,” an MTA spokesman said.

Donohue notes that Transit employees 124 workers who can service these machines. Based on these numbers, each worker must make approximately seven service calls per day to machines that could be anywhere in the system. Keeping the MVMs operating at top shape then is a Sisyphean task.

Meanwhile, as the MVMs break down, I’ve noticed an increasing number of error messages on the turnstiles themselves. “Please Swipe Again” has never been so abundant. Perhaps that’s because of the decreasing number of MTA station agents turnstile cleaners who are around to remove build-up from the magnetic card readers. Perhaps these error messages are due to the “useful life” of the technology. Most likely, the problems are a combination of the two.

Ultimately, the end-of-life problems that we’re seeing with the MetroCard technology is indicative of the issues with proprietary technology. Back in 2000, the Village Voice ran an exposé on Cubic and its multi-million-dollar relationship with the MTA, and the alt weekly highlighted the Closed Loop problem. Many of the problems mentioned in the article have since been addressed, but the MTA is still working with a clunky technology designed in the early 1990s that hasn’t achieved widespread adoption outside of the city. It will inevitably break down, and if the failure happens before the MTA’s next-generation fare technology is in place, it will be both costly and disastrous to maintain this aging infrastructure.

Those in charge at the MTA are well aware of this problem. In my conversations with the MTA officials, I’ve heard about the need to bring the contactless fare payment system online sooner rather than later. Still, we’re a few years away from that reality, and the MetroCard machines and card readers must last until then. Frequent breakdowns will just become a fact of life as the technology nears its 20th anniversary.

The MTA is currently engaged in a far-reaching plan to replace the MetroCard with something more futuristic, but this weekend, the fare payment world paused as Raymond deKozan, the man credited with inventing the familiar gold-and-blue card, passed away at age 74. deKozan died at his home in San Diego after a brief illness.

Crain’s New York offers up a biography:

An electrical engineer by training, deKozan founded what eventually became Cubic Transportation Systems in 1972. The San Diego-based company is a subsidiary of the Cubic Corp., a major defense contractor. The company provides automatic fare collection systems for cities around the world. But its best-known product, at least to New Yorkers, is the MetroCard, that piece of yellow plastic with the magnetic stripe that has become an indispensable tool of city life…

deKozan was born in Richmond, Va., on Feb. 21, 1936. He obtained his degree in electrical engineering at the University of Virginia, and was first employed by the Glenn L. Martin Co. in Baltimore in 1957 as the space race heated up. The Soviet Union had just launched Sputnik, and deKozan was hired to help the company and the country develop its first satellite systems. deKozan moved to Cape Canaveral but was soon recruited by Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego, where he eventually was hired by Cubic.

While San Diego became deKozan’s home, he often moved with his family to the cities where the company had major projects. He lived with his family in New York in the early 1990s while pursuing the MetroCard contract with the MTA. He was also a longtime Yankees fan.

deKozan’s creation has become an icon of New York life, but it too is not long for this world. This MTA is engaged in a trial with both MasterCard and VISA that will eventually see the MetroCard replaced with a contactless payment system. Ideally, this new system would be an international one, and although the MTA once said it is trying to bring a replacement online by 2014, the real timeline is anybody’s guess. Today, though, we send our thoughts out to the deKozan family and mourn the creator of a technology that revolutionized New York City transit.

Since Jay Walder arrived at the MTA nearly one year ago, the MetroCard and its future have been on the minds of New Yorkers. Picking up on internal fare-media development efforts, Walder has all but declared war on the familiar blue-and-gold piece of plastic that allows us unlimited access to the city’s subways and buses. While New Yorkers may be fond of the swipe and the seemingly ubiquitous messages urging us to “swipe again at this turnstile,” many at the MTA see the MetroCard as a symbol of the subway’s touchy relationship with technology. The MetroCard is early 1990s — or even late 1980s — technology, and it’s the Twenty Teens. Let’s get with the program already.

And so the battle for the MetroCard replacement has been launched. In late 2009, Walder announced that the MTA hoped to implement new fare payment technology by 2014, and the effort for a replacement would extend beyond the current market leaders. London’s Oyster card and the WMATA’s SmarTrip program may seem high-falutin’ to New Yorkers who have no exposure to contactless cards, but even those technologies are out-of-date. The follower for so long, this time around, the MTA wants to be a leader.

So far, the MTA has offered the public glimpses at its long-term strategy. A small pilot program currently in place in station salong the East Side IRT and numerous Manhattan bus routes involves automatic fare deductions from credit and debit cards. MasterCard led the pilot with its PayPass technology, and yesterday, Visa announced that its payWave would now be accepted at these stations as well. Furthermore, a new smartphone app will allow straphangers to use cutting-edge mobile payment technology as well. This — and not an RFID smart card — is how the MTA sees the future of subway fares.

The question, of course, remains why. Despite some glitches, the MetroCard appears to do the job. So what is pushing the MTA to kill it after just 16 years? In an extensive overview of the quest to kill the MetroCard, Cody Lyon at the Gotham Gazette answers just that very question. It is, not surprisingly, a matter of cost. As Lyon writes and as I’ve explained in the past, the MTA spends 15 cents per fare dollar on maintaining MetroCard infrastructure and collecting money. The MTA employs 124 workers whose sole tasks involve keeping MetroCard Vending Machines up and running, and Transit says it received 28,456 service calls for those machines in one month — this past July.

What, then, can smart cards do? By reducing fare infrastructure costs, the MTA says it will save $55 million for every cent they shave off that 15-cent total, and the proper new technology could result in nearly $200 million in increased revenue. “Transit industries across the country are finding it costs them a lot of money, in machines and service, and collecting cash out of them, to be able to operate the transit ticketing and fare payment services they offer,” Randy Vanderhoof, the Executive Director of the Smart Card Alliance, a group meeting with the MTA this week, said to Lyon. “Anything transit agencies can do to reduce the number of tickets they have to sell, and the number of machines they have to supply in the stations, will allow them to save money.”

Lyon’s pieces touches upon other goals and concerns with a charge card-based system. As he notes, the concerns focus around those who do not have credit or debit cards. For that not-insignificant percentage of New Yorkers, the MTA would have to make pre-paid cards of some shape available for purchase, and the authority wants to better integrate fare payment across its subagencies before wading into that economic experiment.

So how soon will the post-MetroCard era dawn? Walder’s early 2014 prediction may be too optimistic. MTA officials told Lyon that the timeframe may, in the grand tradition of MTA projects, be elongated. “The new smart card program will see full subway and train implementation in the coming years,” Aaron Donovan, authority spokesman, said. It’s anybody’s guess how soon that will be.