Proof of Payment / Smart Card

St. Louis has a proof of payment transit system.  You do not need to put money in the parking meter, but if you are caught you will pay a large fine.  You do not have to pay to ride the Metrolink, but if you are caught, you will pay a large fine.  This is a low-tech system that requires transit authorities to pay dozens of workers to enforce it. 

The proof of payment system is common throughout the United States.  Plenty of cities use it:  Los Angeles, Portland, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Baltimore, Seattle, San Jose, Sacramento, and Phoenix.

Ten years ago, if you ran a red light in St. Louis County, a police officer might pull you over and give you a ticket.  Now, you will see a camera flash and a week later get a picture of yourself in the mail with the ticket.  With you punished by camera flash and being issued your ticket automatically, the city police can put their employees to better use actually protecting people.  This is the difference:  expensive low-tech vs. cheap (minus installation) high-tech.

Introducing, the smart card,

The Oyster Card, is the smart card for the London underground.  Every city that uses one has their own name.  Singapore has EZ-Link.  Hong Kong has the Octopus Card.  San Diego has introduced the Compass Card.  The card maker is usually a private company with a nice government contract.  In Seoul, T-Money is the main card, but rival cards like U-Pass operate on the same technology with the same readers.

The smart card is just a chip.  If you have a sim card in your phone, it can also be used as a smart card.  They do this in Seoul. 

Now what is a smart card?  A smart card is a cash card.  You put money on it and swipe it wherever you need.  It is rechargable and not dependent on your identity.  If you lose it, you just lose whatever money is on it, and you buy a new card. 

How do you recharge your card? You can usually do it in subway stations, but any gas station or 7-11 also has the option.

A smart card can be used virtually anywhere in place of cash,

Fines are paid with it in the Singapore public library.

You can use it in Hong Kong at the local McDonald's.  You can get a drink at 7-11 or buy groceries

Most importantly though, it is used for transportation.

When you enter the train station, you swipe it.  When you leave, you swipe it.  Get on a bus, swipe.  Get off a bus, swipe.  Get on a Hong Kong ferry, swipe.  Get off, swipe.  Why swipe twice?  You pay for the distance you travel.  If you swipe out of the subway within an hour of swiping onto a bus, you transfer for free.  The card makes your trip easy, and cheaper.  You never need to buy tickets. 

In Philly, there are three train systems.  There's a NJ train, a Philly metro, and an Amtrak system.  Each one has a different payment system, and a 3-day pass for one means nothing to the others. 

In Seoul-Incheon, there are three subway operaters and one commuter rail company operating in the same space.  They use the same payment system and commuters transfer seemlessly between them.

In St. Louis, there is a plan for a street car system that has the potential to not honor your 6-month Metro pass.  You might have to buy a ticket every time.

A bus or tram cannot move quickly if the driver must issue a ticket and give change for every passenger. 

One cannot move passengers quickly in and out of subway stations if there are turnstiles either.

 

In this image, you see the flipper system used on Seoul's line 9.  It seems old ladies in Seoul often duck under the turnstiles and get on the train for free.  These flippers do not impede paying passengers--especially those with folding bikes like myself--the way turnstiles do.  When an old lady tries to sneak through, she gets wacked by the flippers, a sound is made, and the station agent catches her with a sigh of irritation.

There is one more thing that the smart card can do for city transportation.  Most transit advocates know that more taxpayer money is spent on drivers than public transit users.  In St. Louis, there is the common argument that county drivers do not want to pay for a system that they do not use, meaning the metrolink.  Well, we non-drivers pay more for the system that they use, so it is only fair we reverse the arguement on them.  Introducing Electronic Road Pricing,

 

Put this box on your dashboard, and insert your smart card into it.

The gantries over the road pay attention to where your car/card is and deduct the proper amount from it.  No card?  You get a ticket in the mail.  This system makes every road a toll road.  It also means that transportation authorities have the money to repair and fix the roads that are used most.  It gives real-time data of the users in the system for better traffic management.  Moreover, it also allows for the implementation of a congestion pricing scheme for your city if voters get serious about fixing their traffic problems.  Local roads paid for with local money.

Now what if you don't have a car, but you travel by taxi?  Well the taxi driver pays.  Then you pay him with cash, credit or, 

You get in the cab, take a ride, and then swipe your card when you get out.

Smart cards need not be cards of course.  They may be in your cell phones or in a bizarre future embedded in your palm for super easy swiping...  heh.  Or, like in Seoul, just made cute and attachable to your phone or keys.

A city like Singapore, with all driver and passengers on every form of transportation paying for exactly the amount of travel they are doing brings down the cost of transportation for everyone and generates enough data to study ways to make it even better.

The system is slowly catching in the US.  Look what Maryland is doing.

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Now back to St. Louis.  Metrolink stations in St. Louis are not designed for the installation of card readers.  They are outside and exposed to the elements, as all winter commuters know.  Serious overhauls would be needed for any changes to be made.

Individual tickets are at an unreasonable price and take an irritating amount of time to extract from the machines.  Long term passes are the only real option for regular commuters.  Walk to the platform and step on the train.  No scanning and no ticket required. 

There is still this Loop Trolley to consider,

If I get off the Metrolink at Forest Park or Delmar and want to get on the street car to go to U-City Library, how easy will my transfer be?  How many stairs will I take, how much rain will fall on my head, and will my Metro pass work on the trolley?  These questions matter.