Metro's new smart card system appears to be working
Now that Metro has a new company working on its smart card system, things appear to be moving along at a much faster clip:
Some bus riders may already have noticed a small box mounted beside the bulky unit. The new readers are not only sleeker than the ones they replace, they are smarter and a lot more durable — with no moving parts.
Like the existing cards, the "smart cards" that work with the new readers will be sold at Metro Ride Stores and at retail outlets. But in place of a magnetic strip that can be programmed with digital code, they have an embedded computer chip.
Both types of card can keep track of fare charges, but the old cards had to be inserted into the reader, and riders needed a separate card for each type of fare purchased: day passes good for 24 hours from time of purchase; time passes good for seven, 30 or 365 days after first use; and stored-value cards that offered discount fares for paying in advance.
A single smart card can be programmed any of these ways, and will work on buses or MetroRail trains.
Now, if we could just get Metro to practice fare enforcement (turnstiles, perhaps?) on MetroRail.
Rad Sallee's story includes the big dollar contract details:
Metro terminated Cubic's $8.5 million contract in March 2005 and hired Ascom (later bought by ACS) in August. Lobron said the ACS contract, for up to $20 million, covers much more than Metro had asked from Cubic, including marketing assistance, a public education campaign, a help desk and other services. To date, $14 million has been spent, he said.
Meanwhile, Cubic has sued to collect the $4 million unpaid balance on its contract. The case is pending in state district court.
Cubic is suing to get the balance of a contract when it never delivered a working product? Unbelievable. For some reason I had thought Metro was suing to get back all the money it had paid to Cubic, but apparently not, so that's four million taxpayer dollars down the drain.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 04/24/06 08:37 AM | Print |
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