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may seem high-falutin’ to New Yorkers who have no exposure to contactless cards, but even those technologies are out-of-date.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.
25 comments
Read some of the issues reguarding TAP in Los Angeles or Translink in the bay area. Metrocard semes to have fewer problems.
Baltimore’s MTA just started using the Charmcard witch can be interchanged with WMATA’s Smartrip or Atlanta’s breeze card.
I found TAP to work fine, once I finally found a place to buy one!
Translink in the Bay Area (which has been renamed as something silly that I can’t remember) has been a cl*sterf&ck from the beginning but that has little to do with RFID technology than with infighting between the myriad agencies — BART, Muni, Golden Gate Transit, AC Transit, SamTrans — to name just a few that were expected to participate. They couldn’t agree anything. They began that project over 10 years ago and Muni is just getting around to installing gates now — which btw can by opened from the outside with a swipe of the hand, so they still have to figure out to avoid fare beaters.
Never ever ever look to Bay Area for examples of interagency cooperation. Especially in transit. There is just too much parochialism for it ever to go smoothly.
I still think overall that using private issued cards instead of an RFID card like Oyster or Charm or SmarTrip or what have you — is far preferable as it allows a level of control over the features. But apparently MTA wants to get out of the card selling business entirely.
Translink is even worse than PayPass. PayPass is a globally unique implementation of an international standard. Translink is a proprietary standard; if the vendor screws the MTA over, the MTA can’t ask any competitor to provide infrastructure to compatible specs.
I think late 80’s is even being generous. I believe DC had what were essentially pay-per-ride metrocards in the early 80’s.
Problem: not everyone has a credit or debit card.
like students, kids, the elderly, or the poor
an MTA-issued smart card must be an option in the future
Yeah, but then there wouldn’t be an opportunity for MasterCard and Visa to make money at public expense.
but most in that group have cell phones. that would make those who need something else far fewer than one would think. For those sell prepaid cards at local merchants. Never understood why subway riders are treated so much different than bus riders who need exact change or metro cards.
Most seniors already have special discount metrocards issued by the mta. they would just have rfid versions issues by visa or mastercard running the program through one of their member banks just as NYC has chase running my transit benefit program
Cellphones aren’t ordinarily equipped with smartcard chips. They have to sell special Octopus and Suica cellphones in Hong Kong and Tokyo.
There seems to be some pressure to use credit/debit cards as our touchless payment mechanism. One problem. I want a separate card which can only be used for transit – so I don’t have to keep a credit card out in the open. If I can’t have a card, I want an RFID token similar to the ExxonMobil Speedpass to use as touchless payment mechanism. Is that too much to ask?
I can’t imagine they wouldn’t do that, more for people that don’t have a credit card at all, but I assume it will happen.
Totally unrelated to MetroCard technology is that funny PhotoShopped image. The torso of the guy in the NY shirt seems to be in front of the hat-wearing guy, yet Hat Guy’s arms are in front of the torso of NY Shirt Guy.
Hehe, see what you mean.
I actually know the guy in green who’s doing the tapping.
Seems as if there’s a limit to how much of the current collection/maintenance infrastructure you can eliminate by going to a smart card system, because along with people who don’t have credit/debt cards, you also have to deal with non-regular users of the subway and bus systems who may have credit cards and cell phones, but not those equipped with the proper technology to deduct fares (let alone the problem of very occasional riders of the system not being aware of the point/wave technology).
Unless the MTA wants to ban cash transactions or every credit card issuer in the world can get their smart chips into action (we won’t even go into the effort the MTA’s going to need to get Apple to put the smart-card option into their proprietary/non-modifiable iPhone software and hardware), you may have less of the current support system to deal with, but you’re not going to be able to eliminate it completely.
The smartcard system HELPS occasional riders. Most credit cards will be 100% rfid by the end of 2011. No problem there. If you are not signed up for the mta you just pay the pay per ride price.
The MTA is presenting its SmartCard rollout plan to its Capital Committee this Mon at 1pm. It’s a public meeting at HQ so anyone can go and get the latest scoop. If you can’t attend, the meetings are videotaped and posted on their website about a week later.
I can’t make it, as usual. Is anyone willing to go and ask why they didn’t let established off-the-shelf transit smartcard manufacturers bid?
Because they didn’t want a dedicated transit smartcard.
In other words, for the same reason Duane Reade accepts credit cards rather than drug store smartcards, and for the same reason McDonald’s accepts credit cards rather than fast food smartcards.
PayPass and payWave are far more widely established, and have far more off-the-shelf products (from far more suppliers), than any transit smartcard manufacturer.
These are vastly different applications.
Duane Reade and McDonalds don’t require the implementation of even basic Metrocard features like multi-ride bonuses, bus transfers or monthly passes, much less potential new features like loading different sorts of passes on the same card, off-peak discounts, or automatic fare “capping”, all of which are standard on other transit smartcards. These require a whole new software system to be implemented on top of PayPass/payWave, and might prevent the use of off-the-shelf hardware too.
Duane Reade and McDonalds can also tolerate much, much higher latency/transaction time than is acceptable for transit applications.
“Duane Reade and McDonalds don’t require the implementation of even basic Metrocard features like multi-ride bonuses, bus transfers or monthly passes”
You are confusing the technology that transmits the fare from the user to the transit device. All the special transit related stuff gets handled by mta computers after the fact. Using an open standard currently used by the major credit card firms is the way to go. Endless supply of suppliers and off the shelf technology.. In Montreal, they had machines that sold paper fare cards for single day or single ride rfid cards
A bus needs to know the moment I tap whether I’m transferring or not in order to know whether I have enough money to board; this can’t be “handled by mta computers after the fact”.
The “open standard” handles deducting a predetermined amount from my account at tap-time. Anything else means going beyond what Duane Reade and McDonalds do with the cards, which means new and poorly-tested software.
Not sure why you bring up Montreal, OPUS is exactly the kind of off-the-shelf (MIFARE-based) transit-specific card we are suggesting the MTA should consider.
For transit use, smartcards need fast card readers on buses that can automatically deduct fares, card readers for inspectors, personal charging systems, robust security, etc. PayPass may or may not be easily adaptable, which is why it should have been put out to an open bid. Who’s to say ERG/Sony, NXP, or Calypso couldn’t have developed the same thing for half the price?
Duane Reade and McDonald’s accept cash for their operation, so they have to operate with multiple forms of payment anyway – including, by the way, transit smartcards. Subway turnstiles need to use a single form of payment. That’s why competent transit agencies worldwide design their own smartcards instead of patching together deals with multiple credit card vendors.
[…] 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 […]
[…] a few years, we could be mourning the death of the MetroCard as transit agencies around the world look to move toward an international fare payment standard. […]