Comments on: ORCA Rollout Begins Monday

By: Laura

Laura — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:50:51 +0000

Did you ever get this figured out? I am trying to register my ORCA and am getting the error that it’s a blocked card. I certainly don’t want to go to the office and register and put money on it just to lose it. I just want to be able to do it online…arg!!

By: L. Smith

L. Smith — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:41:04 +0000

The youth card I got looks just like any other ORCA Card, and in fact is the one on Wikipedia’s ORCA Card page. I first went to Westlake, where they told me I needed State photo ID (My Student ID wasn’t good enough) and/or a birth certificate, and a parent. I walked over to King Street Center where they told me they only needed the ID for my address, and set up my card.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:05:03 +0000

True for King Street, but I take the train back home, too, and I’m not going all the way to Tacoma. People are already in enough of a hurry to get from the train platform to the bus platform in Auburn that some routinely cross the tracks while the gates are still closed.

Glad I leave the station by bike, I wouldn’t want to get in their way.

By: Oran

Oran — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:14:24 +0000

My opinion is if you’re exiting at King Street station it really doesn’t matter if you tap out because the system assumes you traveled to the last station. That is if you have the pass that’s equal to the value of that trip. For E-purse users, the fare from the entry station to the terminal station would’ve been deducted from the card upon tap in. The exit tap refunds money back to your card if you didn’t travel to the end.

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:56:17 +0000

Just got an ORCA card in the mail in place of my May PugetPass.

Anyone know whether the exit “tap” is required for Sounder rail users using a monthly PugetPass rather than a cash fare value?

I’m not eager to see six cars letting scores of people off to stand in line for the two card readers at the station, half of them in a hurry to transfer to a bus.

By: Oran

Oran — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 14:26:15 +0000

Silly me, this is how it will work. I think I even said it in a past post but I easily forget:

You ‘tag in’ at your origin station, the system will deduct from your card the fare to the farthest station. En route, a conductor or fare inspector could inspect your card. Then, if you ‘tag off’ at a station before the farthest one, the appropriate amount is credited back into your card.

Then I went back to Vuchic and found it on page 378.

By: Adam B. Parast

Adam B. Parast — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:12:12 +0000

I would guess they are a more than a bit preoccupied with the ORCA launch.

By: Adam B. Parast

Adam B. Parast — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:09:48 +0000

Come on Oran. This was covered in our book last quarter.

By: orca FAQ

orca FAQ — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:13:24 +0000

About the Card
http://www.orcacard.com/ERG-Seattle/p3_001.do?m=3

http://www.orcacard.com/ERG-Seattle/p3_001.do?m=33#how-to-revalue

By: orca FAQ

orca FAQ — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 06:09:22 +0000

ORCA ORCA Smart Card Facts

By: Kim

Kim — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:34:11 +0000

I went to a ticketing booth and got my free Orca Card on April 20th, and even adde $50. I tried to register my card this evening and the site tells me that my card is blocked. I sent customer service an e-mail…guess I gotta wait and see what they say.

I’ll try tapping it on the bus ride tomorrow morning and see if it works as an e-purse at least.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:24:31 +0000

That sucks; means I probably won’t get a UW branded U-Pass to add to my collection.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:19:11 +0000

To answer my own question: For the bus, you tap when you’d normally pay (or show your U-Pass).

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:46:12 +0000

I can see the point in doing that for the child’s cards, at least. I think if I was using a reduced fare card for a disability or something, I’d probably prefer not to have an attention-drawing special tone, though.

By: Another Andrew

Another Andrew — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:28:04 +0000

I assume there will be a tone when you tap your card. Why not just make the tone for a child or discounted card a different tone?

By: Oran

Oran — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:18:12 +0000

I use Safari, too and the bottom nav bar appears multiple times. I guess I’ll use Firefox or Camino for this site.

Ironically, if you look at the page source code you’ll find that the cause of that is the code they put in to deal with IE 6 and IE 7′s buggy rendering. WebKit (Safari & Google Chrome) seems to have trouble dealing with this. The W3C validator doesn’t like the page either with 27 errors and 7 warnings. I went to websites that use the same IE CSS hacks and they appear just fine.

By: joshuadf

joshuadf — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:51:51 +0000

Actually, I would bet tourists would be a big user of Orca, especially since many of them come from places with good transit (Japan, Europe, etc.) Also the drivers now have $4 paper day passes on weekends and holidays, so I’d guess they’ll switch to Orca passes at some point.

By: joshuadf

joshuadf — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:47:31 +0000

Ran across this a while back: [PDF] University Transportation Committee October 14, 2008: “Mr. [Josh] Kavanagh informed the group that the re-card project has been temporarily put on the back burner. Re-card is the process of getting every member of the UW community a new photo ID card with an ORCA ID chip. ORCA is not currently ready for the UW to do this and cannot provide the card stock needed until a later date. At the moment it looks as though it will cause a six month slip in the originally projected timeline. The ORCA project has been forced to take on a more narrow focus in order to meet the deadline of March go-live for the retail product. While it is hard to predict when this project will be accomplished, the most likely date the UW could go active would be the Fall of 2010.”

If they don’t have card stock for UW, they won’t for Microsoft either.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:39:46 +0000

I called Metro; didn’t know ORCA had its own hotline. Now I see it does so I’ll have to call them tomorrow.

By: Oran

Oran — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:27:49 +0000

I have to wonder if the ORCA Customer Service hotline is really in Seattle or is it some call center elsewhere.