Translink Smartcards and Faregate System

Ear­lier this year, I posted on Face­book and Twit­ter about Translink want­ing to move to a more ver­sa­tile (and I guess envi­ron­men­tal friendly) method of fare sys­tem. If you did not read my tweet or post, I will sum it up for you. Translink is look­ing into imple­ment­ing a Fare­gate Sys­tem at all Sky­train Sys­tems (Expo Line, Mil­le­nium Line, Canada Line and the Ever­green Line) and using a Smart­card System.

As of July 9 of yes­ter­day, Translink has issued Requests for Pro­pos­als to three com­pa­nies to sub­mit their designs. After they sub­mit their designs, the com­pany will have to install, oper­ate and main­tain the Fare­gate Sys­tem as well as the Smart­card System.

For those of you who are unfa­mil­iar with the Smart­card Sys­tem, it is already in use in most well-known tran­sit sta­tions around the world — includ­ing the Clip­per in the San Fran­cisco Bay area (for­merly named the Translink Card), the Octo­pus Card in Hong Kong, and the Oys­ter Card in England.

The Smart­card tech­nol­ogy is in use already in almost ten cities in Canada. More trans­porta­tion, such as Translink, are see­ing the ben­e­fits of the sys­tem and the impact that it can have in improv­ing the cur­rent trans­porta­tion system.

In the Greater Toronto, Hamil­ton and Ottawa area, they have the Presto sys­tem. The Presto sys­tem is sim­i­lar to a debit/gift card. It uses RFID tech­nol­ogy and it is shared by ten tran­sit providers. You can only store $320 on your Presto card and it will auto­mat­i­cally deduct from your bal­ance every­time you scan your card. Scan­ning your card is easy. All you have to do is wave it at the receiver. Upon waiv­ing at the receiver, it will show you your bal­ance. Unfor­tu­nately there are no paper trail — mak­ing it hard to trace if there was a glitch in the system.

In the Greater Mon­treal region, they have the OPUS Card. The OPUS Card has a chip built inside the card, sim­i­lar to the Chip and PIN VISA cards that you see on the streets. You can refill your bal­ance at the sta­tion, on the com­puter or at an autho­rized retail store. When you get to the sta­tion, you put your card into the turn­stile machine and it will come out the other side while you walk through the turn­stile. When you put in your card, the machine will also tell you your balance.

The three com­pa­nies that Translink sent the Request for Pro­pos­als are Thales/Octopus — the devel­oper of the Hong Kong Octo­pus Card, Secro/Parkeon — the devel­oper for Aus­tralia Perth, and Cubic/IBM — the devel­oper of the Oys­ter Card in Eng­land, UK. Translink will make the final deci­sion on who will be in charge of the sys­tem at the end of the year, after it has seen all the proposals.

Translink plans to have it up and run­ning in Spring 2013 and mak­ing the com­pany main­tain it for ten years. This means that Ever­green Sta­tions will come with the turnstiles.

So far, there has been an allo­ca­tion of $170 mil­lion for this pro­posed sys­tem. Translink is putting $100 mil­lion (59% of total), the provin­cial gov­ern­ment is putting $40 mil­lion and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is putting $30 million.

Imple­ment­ing this sys­tem will ben­e­fit Translink. Translink will be able to ensure that there are no fare evaders at the Sky­train sta­tions. Users will no longer have to pur­chase a Fare Trans­fers. They will be able to use their reusable card to use the trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Translink will be able to track where you, the rider, are trav­el­ling to/from. Translink will no longer require their Sky­train atten­dants to tally the rid­ers and use the tally elec­tron­i­cally to find how many rid­ers are there in the sys­tem. There are thou­sands of ben­e­fits of this system.

Related posts:

1. Ever­green Line and the Tri-Cities
2. UPASS for BC Colleges/Universities