CharlieCards Coming to a Commuter Train Near You

If you have a corporate monthly pass...

Commuter rail passengers rejoice! In addition to having restored 42 more scheduled trains to service, bringing them up to 82% of normally scheduled service, it looks like Keolis and the MBTA will soon be issuing CharlieCards to all customers who receive their monthly passes through the corporate program.

According to an advisory issued to corporate subscribers, customers will be given CharlieCards on a monthly basis, replacing paper CharlieTickets. These will be loaded with a LinkPass that can be used on buses and trains (presumably for all non-Interzone passes). By the sound of it, there will be an indicator of the card's validity and cards will only be visually examined by commuter rail conductors.

Update: MBTA Director of Communications Joe Pesaturo filled us in with some background on the program:

In January, the MBTA began a pilot program involving CharlieCards with a monthly pass printed on them.  These cards have been used as  ‘flash passes’ on board commuter rail trains, then they are used like any other CharlieCard (tapped for entry at fare boxes and fare gates).
 
With the March CharlieCards/Monthly passes, the end of the 3-month trial program is approaching.   Because feedback from customers in the pilot program has been very positive, interim MBTA General Manager Frank DePaola is extending the program.  GM DePaola says the CharlieCard/monthly passes are available to all participants in the Corporate Pass Program and customers who purchase monthly passes through the MBTA website.

Advisory for Commuter Rail Cards - April

Photo Credit: Masabi (Flickr)

One and a half steps forward

This isn't quite the full implementation of the CharlieCard system that was originally planned with the rollout of CharlieCard. Only 3 years ago, the MBTA unveiled plans to implement Masabi's smartphone ticketing platform; New York's MTA commuter railroads followed suit months later.

Apparently implementing mobile ticketing isn't a problem unique to Boston. Other agencies, including Chicago's Metra and CTA have struggled to harmonise fare payment systems, even after the recent introduction of the relatively forward-thinking Ventra payment system. Even New York City's deployment of an RFID smartcard system has taken decades.

Cubic, the company who now owns NextBus, the information broker for our bus tracking and prediction system, also happens to make the smartcard systems for the Bay Area, Minneapolis, and Seattle, all of whose commuter rail networks accept payment via smartcard.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Many of these investments have been hampered by the more threatening spectre of deepening backlogs of safety-critical repair projects, many of which continue to go un-addressed by the state leadership who hold the purse strings of regional transit agencies.

Biding our time may end up paying off in the end. As contactless payment systems have emerged, there's been concern about different technologies security vulnerabilities, universal compatibility, and overall cost of implementation. At this month's Mobile World Conference, Cubic and MasterCard announced a partnership. We're likely to see further partnerships as these technologies mature and standards emerge.

Plentiful, standardised technologies will make it cheaper to implement a new fare payment system (but will still cost millions to implement). This is the type of organisational and electronic change we should be expecting of the T as ask them to improve operational efficiency. To that end, we can't pursue this efficiency without investment—a very significant point we hope this winter has proven.

For now, we'll settle for a little extra convenience, even if it's really only a half-step in the right direction.

Lede photo: MBTA Press

MBTA ROC Proposes Solution to Student Auto-Dependence and Late Night Service Costs

The MBTA Rider Oversight Committee released a report yesterday on the viability of using funds from a proposed student pass program with the region's innumerable universities to fund late night service. This follows months of research into other systems that have university transit pass programs in place and how those programs have succeeded phenomenally.

The MBTA ROC's proposed program would follow in the footsteps of the Chicago Transit Authority's (CTA) U-Pass program, where area colleges are given the opportunity to purchase unlimited-use transit passes for no less than 100% of their full-time student body. In exchange for a 100% buy-in, the MBTA would offer semester passes to participating Boston-area colleges at a mark-down greater than the current college student discount. The program would be mutually beneficial since the students would be granted free access to all MBTA subways, light-rail vehicles, and buses, while the MBTA would receive additional revenue from the increased pass sales (the CTA, for example, generated $25 million in revenue through their U-pass program last year). Furthermore, the MBTA would be required to use that additional revenue to provide overnight service, which would be a benefit to all MBTA riders.

The biggest and nearly insurmountable hurdle will be convincing these universities that paying into the program will be buying students real mobility. The Green Line and 57/A buses along the BU and BC corridors are hardly the paragon of transit reliability and speed.

Additionally, there are many private carriers either run by the universities or contracted on their behalf that already provide a level of mobility across campus. These services could instead be given to the MBTA as an extension of the relationship with the T, but that is not explored in the report and would likely be a venture very far down the road.

The $10 million would only go to operations of extended late night bus service since the T still needs to shut down rail service for maintenance, as has been covered by numerous press outlets, including the Metro and the impressive documentary that leads this post.

Even more damning is the logistics in incorporating multiple technologies and standards into the same RFID card. Chicago's new Ventra system uses pre-paid debit cards integrated into MasterCard's PayPass system, which will eventually evolve into MasterPass and is already compatible with a number of RFID smartphones. HID, which provides the contactless card systems used by most colleges for integrated student ID key cards for residence halls, is also working toward integration with smartphones, which leads us even further toward the possibility that phones will be the common denominator for contactless payment and security systems.

Phones are already a conveyance for currency in Africa and have been for years. For those without NFC/RFID-enabled phones, systems like Ventra still enable fare cards that work with the contactless system. Many transit agemcies are looking to replace their expensive and proprietary fare payment systems, including the MBTA. GM Scott has already voiced her interest in replacing the CharlieCard system and New York City has been working with numerous agencies to find consensus before they replace their nearly 20-year-old MetroCard system.

CharlieCard, less than 10 years old, was delayed, well over budget, and outdated by the time it was fully implemented. The MBTA's reaction to the MIT hack of the CharlieCard itself was a significant setback and current policy and tightness around the system is preventing its growth, as acknowledged by many within the T. Standardisation of the payment system is the only way forward and that may well mean our phones are the lowest common denominator.

Monthly MBTA Passes

[Photo: sivanagareddy/Flickr]

Monthly LinkPasses for January 2010 will soon be available for purchase

Our daily struggles with transit begin and end at the fare gate. Every day we tap, swipe, or insert our Cards and Tickets to enter the system. How we actually load that fare onto our Cards and Tickets is a completely different beast. The fifteenth day of December is fast approaching, which means that we'll be hearing that familiar Stephen Hawking-esque synthesized voice spouting disembodied messages about buying our monthly passes for January more frequently. That is, unless you ride with headphones, in which case you'll see these messages scroll on the in-station digital message boards however often you look at them.

In either case, monthly Bus and Link passes for the following month go on sale on the 15th of each month. You can buy them at a TVM (ticket vending machine) at your station of choice, one of many sales locations, at the new Downtown Crossing Customer Service Centre, or online at the MyCharlie Account Centre. I've blogged about the CharlieCard Web Programme before and my recommendation still stands: save yourself the hassle of having to remember or forgetting until the 1st of the month when the whole system falls to its knees and set up automatic monthly pass purchasing. You'll need to create an account, find your CharlieCard, and register it first.

So, be sure to set up a reminder for yourself if you don't already take advantage of automatic monthly pass purchasing and register your CharlieCard in the mean time. (Note the additional 'No Worries Protection' benefit for registering your CharlieCard.) Three days and counting.