Ray Van Eng (11/10/97)                                       

Vancouver's BC Transit, the largest transit authority in western Canada with a fleet of about a thousand buses and a light rail rapid transit system (see picture below) is going electronic with a fare collection system for better ridership and revenue tracking.

In the next two years, new fareboxes will be installed to handle a sophisicated system that will process coins and magnetically encoded bus ticket passes and transfers. Smart card capabilities will likely be incorporated at a later date.

The technology to be provided by the San Diego-based Cubic Automatic Revenue Collection Group will be the essentially same one used for monitoring the New York metropolitan transit system.

In the Big Apple, magnetic stripe cards are issued to commuters for inter-modal transfers. Eventually, more powerful and versatile computer chip embedded smart cards with stored values will be used to handle fare-paying and transfer activities.

The Cubic Group has been testing a 'GO CARD', a contactless smart card which employs leading edge ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) technology from Ramtron International Corp. in two pilot programs in the world. One in Washington, DC and the other in London, England.

May be some day Vancouverites would get a chance to enjoy the convenience of the 'GO CARD' that enables transit fare payment effortlessly without removing the card from one's pocket and putting it into a machine. Simply by being close to the smart card fare reader is good enough to complete the transaction.