Here’s the link to the new ORCA website, with some details about the card:
When can I get my ORCA Card?
ORCA cards will be available starting in the spring of 2009. The regional agencies will transition customers to the ORCA Card over a period of several months. For a limited time, there will be no fee for the standard ORCA Card. After the introductory period, a $5 card fee will be charged for the standard ORCA Card. Current Regional Reduced Fare Permit (RRFP) holders can exchange their valid RRFP for a new ORCA RRFP Card at no charge by visiting their local transit agency’s customer service office. A new RRFP ORCA Card will cost $3.
A regular transit user here at work told me that according to his bus driver the company that makes the ORCA card readers has gone out of business. Any truth to that rumor?
Ping? Anybody know or able to find out who the manufacturer of the on bus readers is/was? Google isn’t bringing up any answers.
I think there was an australian company, ERG maybe? that was doing it, but I think they lost the contract.
Thanks Andrew!
That info fed into Google brought up the following less than optimistic result:
Maybe, hopefully this isn’t the company building the readers but the source of a false rumor.
Say it ain’t so Joe,
CASE STUDIES – SEATTLE
Dang, another broken link.
Take two:
http://www.erggroup.com/worldwide/details.asp?pid=14&r=5
Ran across this: [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.”
Some more ORCA Tales:
The February 2009 Kitsap Transit Board meeting minutes (PDF) state that Kitsap Transit intends to dump paper transfers entirely once ORCA is up and running. Management claims this policy will save a whole $10,000 a year. No word yet on the backup plan for when the ORCA system, or an individual reader, goes down.
Those same board minutes noted that a board commissioner asked whether ORCA could “be used for car and driver boardings as well as for WSF walk-on passengers. Mr. Clauson [John Clauson, Kitsap Transit Service Development Director] said that while the ORCA card could be by passengers on vehicles, WSF did not ask for the ORCA card to be set up to be used for the car and driver fare. He said each individual agency identified what fares it wanted included and WSF did not ask for that.”
Rumors about ORCA have been freely flying in Kitsap County, as the drivers have been using the problematic driver consoles for a while (for example, drivers have to track bicycles carried on the bus, and the console apparently uses a bicycle glyph which doesn’t always work properly), and the readers were turned on for testing a while back. Kitsap Transit management is not a big fan of communicating information about any aspect of the agency’s operations to anybody outside of management, so I did some research for myself and a driver I was talking to about ORCA.
Central Puget Sound Regional Fare Coordination Project members are definitely aware of ERG Group’s financial troubles, as my driver had been told by somebody connected to the project that CPSRFCP has a replacement company waiting in the wings if ERG Group goes out of business. Unfortunately, he wasn’t given a name. There are other companies working on similar systems for other transit agencies, but a belated initiative by the American Public Transportation Association to coordinate efforts nationwide appears to just be getting up to speed, so there’s no telling what will happen locally if ERG no longer exists. A fascinating study produced by the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley references interviews with members of APTA’s Universal Transit Farecard Standards and Revenue Management committees at a “Fare Collection Workshop” in 2005, and the study hints that a universal platform is what the group would prefer. However, as the study also repeatedly points out, the best intentions always crash smack dab into (competing) local, regional, state, and federal politics.
In the meantime, I didn’t see any references to the company that manufacturers the ORCA readers going out of business, but ERG Group supplies a proprietary reader, so switching to a different manufacturing plant, if necessary, shouldn’t be a problem. Cubic Transportation Systemshas also been making smart card readers for a while, and has worked with ERG Group, so it’s possible the CTS reader already works with the ORCA system, or could easily be adapted if necessary.
Today (Saturday, March 21), one of my bus drivers said he had been told that ORCA will be “implemented” by Kitsap Transit on April 15. I don’t know if this is official (although that was implied), and I don’t know what “implemented” translates to, but it’s an interesting development.
Good grief! Sometime in the past couple of days, the ERG Group home page was removed, and replaced by notices that ERG has been split into two companies.
“As approved by shareholders of ERG Limited at its Annual General Meeting on 17 November 2008, the Company’s name has been changed to Videlli Limited. The Company continues to be listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the new ASX code ‘VID’. The automated fare collection business has been sold to Vix ERG. Videlli’s main activity is to continue to pursue litigation against the New South Wales Government in relation to the termination of the Sydney Tcard project. This website contains various investor information and ASX announcements relating to Videlli. ”
“The business of the ERG Group has been sold to a joint venture called Vix ERG Pty Ltd in accordance with approval by shareholders of ERG Limited at its Annual General Meeting on 17 November 2008. Vix ERG continues to operate the businesses formerly run by the ERG Group. The Vix ERG website contains information on various projects undertaken and products offered by Vix ERG. ”
The Videlli Limited home page states “The company announced a change in its name from ERG Limited to Videlli Limited on 6th March 2009.”
It appears that Vix ERG is going to continue to operate as if nothing has happened.
Sound Transit mentions this April as the start up date (in Board meeting documents) for ORCA but I’m beginning to have doubts.
I read a couple ATU Local 587 newsletters and for four months (almost) in a row, people were concerned about how ORCA is going to work out in the real world. A couple examples:
• The driver has to change to the correct zone manually. I’ve seen buses driving with “FREE AREA” on the reader long after the bus left downtown. For some reason, they couldn’t make the AVL system change it for them when it’s obviously outside the RFA by a large margin. Hopefully, GPS will remedy this.
• If someone wants to ride one-zone on a bus that’s set to two-zones during peak hours, that must also be changed manually by the driver by pushing a button. (However, during the beta test, card holders can preset their zone preference)
• If a mistake is made and a customer was overcharged the fare could be refunded but the process requires 2 taps and many buttons pushed to complete (one for refund and one for the correct fare). This slows down boarding.
• The Driver Display Unit’s user interface is not the best designed in the world, like Mike said.
• For the case of a bus, the system doesn’t know exactly where you boarded, only the vehicle and route number
I really want buses to have readers at every door and make the system smarter so the driver can deal with fare collection less but a reader (technically a Fare Transaction Processor) costs $827 a unit (from an appendix in the ORCA ILA). It’ll cost around $1.8 million to put a reader at every door of the 2,207 vehicles of all the partner agencies.
ORCA has been a mess, but I think light rail will roll with it. That, or it’ll be free :/
Even more Orca Tales from Kitsap County
Today, one of my bus drivers responded to a passenger’s query on when ORCA would start by stating that it would be “soon” and that the system was already operating. She hastened to add “for us,” meaning the drivers.
She ran through some of the basics, then went on to say that once an ORCA card is tapped (and I don’t know if this is one of Kitsap Transit’s standard anti-passenger policies, although I suspect it’s an ORCA policy), it can’t be used again for ten minutes, stating this is to prevent a passenger from handing his/her card off to somebody else. I assume this policy is exclusively for passes, and the driver didn’t elaborate, but it’d be interesting to know if this rule applies to the “e-purse.” I understand why this policy is in place, but I imagine some time-consuming unintended consequences are going to be the result. For example, once during the beta test, my card registered on a Kitsap Transit reader, and the green LED blinked, but the card didn’t register on the driver’s console (or so the driver claimed). As I was locked out from re-tapping at that point, it brought the process to a halt (resulting in the driver throwing a temper tantrum). I suppose our best defenses as riders during the rollout will be patience, a sense of humor about “time-and-money-saving computers,” a small notebook or journal to keep track of SNAFUs, and plenty of cash to pay our fares.
The driver also said that the system would automatically give Kitsap Transit riders a two-hour transfer. I’d still like to know how cash-paying passengers are going to be handled; perhaps passengers that pay with cash will no longer receive transfers. Hopefully, all of this information will be posted very soon on orcaiscoming.com and the websites of the participating transit agencies.
The passenger also noted that the driver console wouldn’t let his driver log on this morning, and my driver casually replied that “some do and some don’t.” (Yikes!)
Finally, the mysterious, “virulent ERG lime green” card terminals (read/write?) that for the past few years have been glued to the security glass of Kitsap Transit’s “Customer Service Office” in the soothingly-earthen-toned Bremerton ferry terminal now have ORCA logos on them. I haven’t seen these particular terminals installed anywhere else, and an extensive web search turned up nothing like them. Based on the oval design and the color, it may be a standard ERG terminal. The terminals are mounted quite high (the wheelchair-bound and short folks will definitely have problems), and it also appears the cards are going to be difficult to insert and remove (an antiquated vandal-resistant design, I presume), so I hope the other transit agencies will be utilizing one of the better-designed read/write terminals.
If you have an e-purse, there is a function to allow group purchases. You simply tell the driver that you want to pay for a group. The driver will then select “group purchase” on his/her ORCA console and ask you how many Adults, Children, Seniors/Reduced Fare passengers are in your party. A bunch of buttons will be press and THEN you tap your ORCA card.
When I went through training several months ago there were still lots of bugs. One example: An Adult with an ORCA card e-purse could not make a group purchase that included a reduced fare permit rider. The ORCA card with the e-purse had to belong to a reduced fare permit holder. We’ve all been submitting comments on the problems we foresee. Hopefully the powers that be will fix these issues before you all have to use it.
Most of the problems I see are related to the e-purse functionality. If you have a monthly/annual pass, the card will be easier to use than your old one and hopefully more reliable. (Magnetic stripe cards are notoriously unreliable on routes I drive). Cash fares will be the same – just put the cash into the cash fare box (probably the same equipment you have today). Transfers will be up to the individual transit agency. The RUMOR, and it’s just that folks, is that Sound Transit will no longer honor or issue paper transfers. You will have to have an ORCA card to transfer from/to a Sound Transit route. Transfer time will be 90 minutes. Not sure what Metro plans to do.
FYI: ORCA readers have been getting steadily more reliable on Metro’s equipment (at least at East Base). I haven’t had one that doesn’t work for a while now. We’ve been told there are county employees with ORCA cards out testing the system, but I haven’t seen one yet. Now, if I can just remember to change the fare zone… ;)
I overheard two drivers saying there’s around a hundred folks with ORCA cards testing the system and there’s a page on the Metro website called “Exercising the System” to report troubles with ORCA linked from the home page.
The readers on the King Street Station platform are now active. I tried tapping my beta ORCA card and it beeped really loud and told me to try again. Next I’m going to try adding money to the card’s e-purse when ORCA launches.
2009-04-07 | comment posted @ https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2009/02/18/orca-website-online/
Note to Oran: A passenger tried to use his ORCA beta test card on a Kitsap Transit bus the other day, and got an error message that took quite a while for the driver to clear off his console. The driver was seriously pissed. I suspect that the beta test cards won’t be valid at all once the system is up and running, and that we’ll be required to acquire a current one.
Now, I came across an interesting postscript to my 2009-03-19 note that WSF would not be utilizing ORCA for vehicles.
At one point, some folks at WSDOT and the legislature were thinking ahead. WAC 468-300-854, filed 2007-04-19, effective 2007-05-20, and titled “What toll payment methods are available to manual toll customers?” states that ORCA cards will be a form of payment “available to manual toll customers” in “[e]nabled toll lanes when implemented.” (The agency filings for WAC 468-300-854 give some interesting details about the state’s tolling system.)
So, while WSDOT won’t be implementing ORCA for vehicular traffic on state ferries, ORCA will be utilized on toll projects? Interesting.
At the time, WSDOT may not have been aware that transponder adapters for smart cards were available, and had been for a number of years (the PDF illustrates only one company’s adapter). This rule does help illustrate that the uses for a smart card can get as sophisticated as we want them to (meaning policymakers and end users), depending, of course, on how much commuters are willing to pay. My bet is that a universal card will ultimately become the preferred one.
Today, my Kitsap Transit source again confirmed that Kitsap Transit is going live with ORCA on April 15. A February 2009 King County Metro presentation for businesses says mid-year, at least for businesses that provide bus passes (http://transit.metrokc.gov/cs/employer/pdf/ORCA-employer-overview.pdf). There don’t appear to be any other updates on the websites of the participating agencies. A comment to a March 24 blog posting at the Seattle P-I (http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/archives/164867.asp) says “May 2009 for Kitsap Transit and will eliminate paper transfers to save $10,000 a year, June-July 2009 for Metro, Sound, Pierce, and Community Transit agencies, keeping paper transfers. WSF will be July.” The commenter doesn’t indicate sources. It would make sense for Kitsap Transit to be the guinea pig for the rollout as I believe it has the least complex fare structure of the participating agencies, and the only other participating agency it interacts with is Pierce Transit (five times daily, weekdays only, at a single transfer point).
I called Kitsap Transit to confirm the April 15 launch date, and was told it had been pushed back to a tentative April 20, due to “concerns from across the water.”
I had several more questions for the friendly and knowledgeable employee, and discovered that Kitsap Transit will not, unfortunately, be installing any vending machines. I was also told that the customer service office at the Bremerton ferry terminal will be the only Kitsap County in-person sales location for ORCA cards. Outlying areas, including Bainbridge Island, will undoubtedly have some feedback for Kitsap Transit and its interlocal board regarding that policy, but mail order was, of course, planned from the beginning as a primary sales outlet.
After the launch, passengers will be able to acquire an ORCA card during the customer service office’s business hours, currently Monday-Friday 06:00-19:00, and Saturday 08:00-16:00. Registered cards can be recharged on-line, and all cards can be recharged in person using the “virulent ERG lime green” read/write terminals. I’ve uploaded photos of the terminals to the Flickr pool. (Apologies for the exposures — I had hoped to shoot these during daytime.)
This means careful planning will be required in Kitsap County, as last-minute recharges could get tricky. This also means that passengers using anonymous cards in Kitsap County will only be able to check their balance as they’re boarding a bus, or after waiting in occasionally long lines at the customer service office. Service, though, is generally pretty quick, if not immediate. (Perhaps Kitsap Transit believes the vast majority of cards it’s issuing will be registered, and that they’ll be recharged on-line.)
So, in Kitsap County at least, passengers with anonymous cards will need to have them recharged by a real person, which certainly lessens the anonymity. It’s also possible video cameras at the customer service office windows are tied to transaction inserter character generators integrated with the POS terminals, which would note the card number. Anonymous cardholders would be captured, regardless, on the numerous video cameras throughout the ferry terminal complex. Let’s face it — if somebody really wants to track individual anonymous cards, and associate a particular card with a person, they’re going to be able to.