Bay Area universal transit card stalls
15 June, 2009
category: Contactless, NFC, Transit
Is TransLink, a regional smart card designed to tie some 28 transit agencies in the San Francisco Bay area together stumbling along “like a broken-down bus?” According to the Contra Costa Times, it has been a “bumpy ride” for TransLink. It didn’t help matters when one of the directors for BART, the area’s rail system that’s critical to TransLink’s success, seems to be more enamored with NFC-equipped phones as a transit medium instead of smart cards. He also called Translink “a disaster.”
But as another BART director pointed out, not everyone agrees with that assessment. “TransLink is coming to BART and it’s coming to stay,” he said.
Read more here.