New York City subway will replace MetroCard with Apple Pay

[jis]

All the systems that I have had the pleasure of using smart NFC cards at seem to provide these facilities. Of course we all know New York can be rather exceptional

A more relevant question is will the MTA system interoperate with the systems adopted by adjacent transit organizations?

As far as I can tell there should be no problem interoperating with the NFC based system that has been adopted by PATH. In the past PATH has stated that it is one of their goals to interoperate with the MTA system.

As for NJT, we don't yet know exactly what system, if any, they intend to evolve to.

A bigger issue IMHO is rationalization of fares and fare zones in the NY area, which is an incoherent mess right now, and given the dysfunction of governance of everything in the New York area, it seems highly unlikely that anything will change in that area in the foreseeable future.


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[NorthShore]

All the systems that I have had the pleasure of using smart NFC cards at seem to provide these facilities. Of course we all know New York can be rather exceptional

Again, not CTA.
A flaw which those in the know (though not the average rider who neither knows any better nor understands systems with more reasonable policies worldwide) critique periodically, usually to dismissive, deaf ears.

 

[jebr]

MSP's Metro Transit is also the same way on the day pass thing - the card will not max out at the day pass limit, and so if you know you're going to be doing a lot of traveling in a day and can buy a day pass you're better off doing so.

I sort of forgave this limitation in the era of a more expensive day pass (albeit a 24-hour pass) and the 10% additional fare load with stored value, but with the removal of that benefit and the introduction of a "day pass" (that expires at 2 AM the next day) that is simply 2x a one-way fare, it's a little bit of a pain point.

Of course, Metro Transit is also somewhat unique in that there's no real penalty for paying cash (you'll still get a paper transfer that expires in 2.5 hours, just like with the Go-To Card,) so the seamless transfer benefit is there with either cash or card. (The only one that becomes a bit problematic is if you're doing local to express/Northstar, but I think you can buy up to those as needed at the TVMs or on the bus.)

 

[jis]

Most American transit systems are thoroughly borked. When it is a smartcard based system why should anyone have to buy anything special? They should just have to tap away and the system should automatically collect from them the lowest legal fare, and that should be it. Learn from Oyster instead of inventing each ones own Rube Goldberg schemes.

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[Green Maned Lion]

You know better.

 

[jebr]

Most American transit systems are thoroughly borked. When it is a smartcard based system why should anyone have to buy anything special? They should just have to tap away and the system should automatically collect from them the lowest legal fare, and that should be it. Learn from Oyster instead of inventing each ones own Rube Goldberg schemes.

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Since I've already expressed my frustration with the system in MSP, I'll also offer a potential counterargument as to why it isn't happening in MSP.

The MSP system, according to Wikipedia, was contracted out for a desired contactless launch in 2003. While delays made it so full public launch wasn't until 2007, any design in 2003 would likely find any sort of real-time updating for buses cost-prohibitive. As far as I can tell, the system is set up in such a way so that the buses are essentially "off-line" until they get into the garage at the end of their routes; thus, any data has to be stored either on the card itself or on some sort of data source on the bus itself. For the most part, the cards become the "storage medium" for fare data, with the buses simply storing transactions, updating the card in real time, and updating the server at the end of the day (and getting any fare updates to load onto cards.) With extremely limited storage on the card itself and with five different pass structures at launch time (24-hour pass, 7-day pass, 31-day pass for local non-rush hour, 31-day pass for local rush-hour and express non-rush, and 31 day pass for express rush-hour) it was likely considered technically unfeasible.

That base system, as far as I can tell, is still used today. The readers have all been updated to what appears to be the same style as CTA's since the original readers hit end-of-life, though there are many people who still have older cards and I doubt they rebuilt the underlying system to update in real-time (as far as I can tell they still update only once they get back to the garage, despite most buses having a data link now to provide wi-fi to passengers!) I don't know what it would take to rebuild that system, but hopefully whenever that day comes they'll put in a system that allows automatic pass generation once certain fare points are hit. With real-time connection to a main server that can easily store transactions and do those calculations it shouldn't be too difficult to implement that if the will is there.

Which reminds me, I really should file a formal suggestion/complaint on their website regarding this...

 

[neroden]

Oyster is essentially implemented correctly. Unfortunately, most US implementations have been deficient in one way or another compared to Oyster. Here's hoping NYC follows *best practices* rather than, say, Seattle's *worst practices*.