The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will take a step Monday toward replacing the MetroCard with a new, tap-and-go payment system. The agency, along with MasterCard, NJ Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, will begin testing a system that would let bus and subway riders tap a device on a reader instead of swiping a card, much as riders in London,Washington, D.C. and Hong Kong have been doing for years. Second Avenue Sagas and AM New York have details about what the pilot, which is being offered on some bus lines and the Lexington Avenue subway.
But what’s really important here is the end goal: replacing the MetroCard by 2014. That has been a pet project of MTA Chief Executive Jay Walder, who helped implement London’s Oyster Card, which works as an all-purpose transit card. Walder repeatedly points to the 15 cents per dollar that it costs the MTA to collect fares, and says a tap-and-go card, which auto-refills from users’ bank or credit card accounts, could reduce that expense. (Walder is fond of asking people what other technology in their pocket or in their homes dates to the 1980s, which is when the MetroCard was developed.)
Walder and other backers of a contactless payment system point to numerous advantages that could come from the new devices. Buses would move faster, since riders wouldn’t have to wait for a machine to read and return their cards. Frequent riders could link the cards directly to their credit cards and refill them online, eliminating the need for frequent use of vending machines (though a version of auto-refill already exists). The MTA wouldn’t need to spend as much money maintaining magnetic card readers. And it could be integrated — as the pilot will be — with NJ Transit and the Port Authority, which runs PATH trains, meaning riders would only need one card to get around the region.
Walder has said the new cards would provide both better service for customers and save money for the MTA. But, as Second Avenue Sagas points out, the authority still has a long way to go before tap-and-go payment gets rolled out to all the area’s 468 subway stations, more 4,000-plus buses and the New Jersey commuter rail network:
“How will a program that requires online registration scale across a system of that averages five million riders a day? What will happen to riders who don’t have credit cards or don’t want to supply the MTA with their credit card info? And more importantly, will a credit card touch-and-go system be the final solution for a MetroCard replacement?”
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