New ORCA features next year: Open Payments and 3-Day PugetPass

64 Replies to “New ORCA features next year: Open Payments and 3-Day PugetPass”

1. From a revenue generation standpoint, the 3-day pass makes sense.

   From a rider standpoint, it makes more sense to load three single-day passes. I am at a loss as to what the utility is to the rider to buy a 3-day pass that costs three times as much as a 1-day pass. Is there any precedent for that?

   I can just see the FIFA bosses saying that is not what they meant, and that they were expecting a small discount. And, have the people who came up with this pointless 3-day pass ever ridden transit elsewhere?

   1. I assume the motivation is to make it so tourists land at SeaTac and only have to decipher a TVM once before can take transit around for the weekend. The “discount” is the time savings of only having to buy one pass instead of three.

      I wonder how many people will buy it on a Friday afternoon and be surprised when it’s deactivated on Monday morning.

      1. Well this is certainly helpful for those that don’t stay close to a place w/ a TVM. Nicely done ORCA. Hope this stays.

   2. Buying one 3-day or 7-day pass is more convenient than buying several day passes, especially if you’re buying each one at a TVM.

      Note that a 30-day supply of day passes will cost $6 x 30 = $180. That’s far more than a monthly pass at $108. (Monthly pass rates are based on 18 round trips, or 3 1/2 weeks of M-F work commutes.)

      1. People might only use the pass weekdays.

      2. I loaded up a couple cards for visiting relatives with the minimum number of day passes we expected to use. It took less than a minute. Payment was the slowest part.

         We did not ride transit every day, so I managed not to waste money on unused days. I ended up loading e-purse for the final day, a one-way trip to the airport, as we were exiting the final station the night before.

2. I guess I will have to start pulling my ORCA card out of my wallet when tapping, so the reader does not try to charge my debit cards.

   The inability to check debit or credit card payment sounds like the ORCA pod only came up with half a plan,, or does not want to tell the public the other half.

   Does anyone here have experience with how “open payments” work in practice?

   1. I was thinking the same… Having the inability to verify open payments is definitely an issue. And if the mobile validator is enabled to verify payments, fare ambassadors are going to have a heck-of-a-time reassuring customers they’re not charging their credit card twice during fare inspections.

      1. > if the mobile validator is enabled to verify payments, fare ambassadors are going to have a heck-of-a-time reassuring customers they’re not charging their credit card twice

         This must be the exact reason why mobile validators won’t be able to check payment methods. I’m very curious how ST expects to check fares from Open Payments on a moving train. The ROOT rep wasn’t forthcoming with options, but implied the validators would be able to check payments somehow. Does anyone know how other Proof of Payment systems check fares with Open Payments?

   2. > The inability to check debit or credit card payment sounds like the ORCA pod only came up with half a plan,, or does not want to tell the public the other half.

      From ” a ROOT representative indicated fare inspectors will have the ability to verify contactless fair payments in real time, but will not be able to do it by tapping the payment method itself”

      I think they meant they can check by just looking up the credit card number, just it’s not as easy as tapping the card like for the orca cards

      1. Okay good catch. But if they can’t tap, then what other method would their be? I hope it’s not typing in the card number and hitting “search”. Whatever the process, I hope it’ll be fast as possible or else ambassadors will get bogged down by having to manually search for a credit card transaction.

      2. “typing in the card number and hitting “search”

         that sounds exactly like what it would be. or maybe they would type only the last four digits.

         because I just looked at my apple wallet on my phone and it doesn’t show the full credit card number – only the last four digits. If I pay using my apple phone, but am not carrying the physical card to show them how else would they check?

      3. Even Dallas DART fare officers had the capability to tap my credit card to see if I had paid when I was there – over a year ago.

         There is no reason we can’t do this here. They carried similar if not the same devices to verify.

   3. I put foil around my credit card to avoid the “One card at a time, please” error. My debit card hasn’t triggered it. I cut a piece of foil twice the size of the card and fold it in half, stick the card in it, and put it in a credit-card slot in my wallet. Eventually pieces of the foil tear off, but as long as the chip is covered it doesn’t trigger the reader.

      If I start getting more errors or false triggerings with this rollout I’ll let the comment section know.

   4. Portland has open payments, and has had since at least 2021 when I moved there. I recall fare inspectors being able to just tap a contactless card to check, but I used a physical Hop Card for most of my riding so I could be wrong.

      1. I believe Portland has it since 2017. It might be the first place to have digital apple transit card in the country.

   5. That’s why it is easier to tap your phone instead. You can always set up which card is enabled for express transit mode. I never tap a physical card.

      1. I’d still find it easier to pull out my ORCA card. I’d just keep it in a different but consistent pocket.

3. It’s one thing to have a three-day pass. It’s another to make it easy to purchase and to let people (residents and visitors) know about it.

   What kind of rollout will this involve? Will they be sold in TVMs? Will it be available for purchase from a smart phone? Will the pass have a QR code that can be texted (and possibly abused by others)?

   Will there be banners announcing the pass at stations? Will ST work with airlines to let landing passengers know about the option, or work with SeaTac to reach as many deplaning passengers as possible?

   Finally, calling it a “pilot” often concerns me as that typically means that there is little to know effort in making changes to permanent signs and such.

   1. It has to be a pilot because we can’t just change things willy-nilly, silly! I fully expect the PugetPass to be made a permanent offering afterward, though.

      The 3-day PugetPass will be purchasable exactly like 1-day or 30-day passes. The messaging will have to be a collaboration between whoever’s making tourism guides and the ORCA team.

   2. I can’t recall any ORCA pilot project that has not proceeded to become a permanent feature.

      They’ll probably keep this one for the same reason they still offer to upload single-day Link-only passes: keeping the money from suckers who did not realize there was a better product available (three single-day Regional Day Passes).

4. In 2023, transit was made free for two days around the All-Star game:

   https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/allstar-week-farefree#:~:text=Sound%20Transit%20to%20run%20additional%20service%20for,service%20fare%20free%20July%2010%20and%2011

   So does this mean that baseball fans got free transit but soccer fans will not? There’s a blatant pastime equity concern here! (feigned outrage)

   It’s a curious difference in approach. While it is nice for a rider to get a “free day” on transit I’m not so sure that the way things were handled in 2023 were a better or worse thing than the introduction of this pass along with a fare-paying requirement in 2026.

   1. It’s probably an arrangement with the team owners who were paying for it. It’s possible there might be the same thing too for the World Cup, but some people will come for a week or more.

   2. For that many games, uh no.
      Unless you want the make-transit-fare-free freaks out in force as we’re trying to get fare gates around Link.

   3. The World Cup will have matches here spanning over a month, so a much larger revenue hole, and maybe employers asking for a rebate. Too much mess.

      It was funny, though, when Taylor Swift immediately broke the All-Star ridership records, while still charging fare.

5. it seems to me they need fare gates. I’ve been to places where there was contactless payment but they always have had fare gates.

   1. I hope the fare gates doesn’t mean they end up closing entrances or building less entrances in the future though

      1. Gate doesn’t have to be right at entrance. You can have 20 entrances but just 2 sets of gates. This is generally how subway stations with fare gate are designed around the world. Some of the early shallow tunnel subways like MBTA and MTA subway are tricky because a lot of station’s platforms are at -1 level, but fortunately all the DSTT stations have an extra level between tracks and ground entrance. Where the yellow lines were drawn today are just perfect for fare gates as if they planned to have fare gate on day 1. I think it might have copied station designs of other heavy rail stations in the US planned and built around the time. WMATA, BART, and, MARTA all have very numbers of underground stations with very similar layout.

   2. There’s a potential fare fate pilot next year. Probably after the Works Cup.

   3. Go to a UW game where they push thousands through the stations, people can’t have any time to tap. No one is checking.

      The fare only covers 3% of the ridership cost. Get rid of the fare totally.

6. This really just sounds like another Puget sound transit mess. Why on earth would anyone spend 18 bucks for 3 dollars of value? A 3 day pass should be good for 3days unlimited use. Full stop. Im less?worried about verification since I haven’t had a fair ched in probably more than a year. Every time I’ve seen a fare ambassadorive asked if they want to check my card. The response seems to always be ” no were just doing outreach ” what a joke.

   1. It is good for three days of unlimited use.

      1. The announcement says the 3 day pass “covers up to $3 in fares.” By definition this is not unlimited use. It covers 1 regular trip at best.

      2. Up to $3 in fares per trip, just like the monthly PugetPass. Some services, like the Monorail, Ferries, and Water Taxi, charge more per ride, so the difference would have to be paid out of e-purse.

         I’m not sure how much more obvious this explanation can get.

      3. Yes, it means an unlimited number of trips for fares up to $3. Metro, Link, and ST Express are all $3 now. Community Transit is $2.50 (Snohomish County), Pierce Transit is $2 (Pierce County). So all those are included in the pass.

         If something has a higher fare, you pay the difference. I think Sounder is the only one left. Sounder fares range from $3.75 to $5.00 depending on distance. So if you go from Seattle to Kent, a $4 fare, the pass covers the first $3, and you pay the other $1 from e-purse. Or at least that’s how it works with physical ORCA cards, which is the only kind I’m familiar with. You get a 2-hour transfer, so you can tap on to additional services within that 2 hours without paying more.

         The ferries and monorail only partly participate in ORCA, so I don’t know whether you get a $3 credit on them or not.

         The agencies may have to explain better how passes work.

   2. The “$3 in fare value” verbiage has always been confusing for yeeears – even for locals. This has always been the standard policy for the PugetPass. But it sounds like it will only cover a SUM total of $3. The 3-day pass (and the current monthly pass) covers unlimited rides that has a fare of $3 or less. If you ride a bus or train that costs, say, $3.50, you have to pay the extra 50 cents.

      When ST, Metro and CT all had buses operating in the same area, overlapped in service but each had different fares, knowledge of fare values was more important. But not that CT no longer serves King County, Metro and ST have the same fare (except for the Sounder), hopefully there’s less confusion.

      No doubt, agencies need to revamp their verbiage and marketing when advertising the PugetPass. It’d be helpful to just call it a “monthly” pass and notate that it doesn’t cover the Sounder or Monorail.

7. London’s system has a similar limitation: if you present a credit/debit card to a fare inspector, they can’t tell if you actually tapped in with it. Instead, the system simply makes a note that the card was presented to a fare inspector, and if they can’t find a corresponding tap when they reconcile everything at the end of the day, they assume you didn’t pay the fare and charge a £50 ($70) fine to the card you showed the fare inspector.

   Obviously this has some issues, and I have no idea if such an approach would work with Sound Transit’s lighter-touch enforcement approach.

   1. Bro! I like that. ST, KC Metro, etc. should totally do this!

   2. But you didn’t authorize the charge. They can’t just charge a fine on your credit card without telling you the amount and you authorizing it. UK laws may be different.

   3. I think this approach is still not very ideal. If you presented a wrong card accidentally, you wouldn’t be able to correct at scene. Instead, you will go through a complex appeal process assume you can actually appeal.

   4. Are people okay with a random guy in a uniform asking to take a picture of their full debit card number?

8. “When asked for clarification, a ROOT representative indicated fare inspectors will have the ability to verify contactless fair payments in real time, but will not be able to do it by tapping the payment method itself”

   So they will need to type in the credit card number of every passenger on the train? There is no technological need for this whatsoever. It sounds like cover for a larger ideological push to remove fare enforcement.

   1. I think yall are overthinking the credit card case. They can just note it down if claimed and just double check later. It’s done like that for other transit agencies as well

   2. “So they will need to type in the credit card number of every passenger on the train?”

      Hopefully most riders will still use ORCA cards. With credit cards, 5% of the fare goes to the credit-card company, which is not providing you transit.

      1. The transaction fees still hit when folks use credit cards to load e-purse and such.

      2. Yes, but there’s both a per-transaction fee and a percentage amount fee. One monthly transaction of $108 for a pass or $60 for e-purse isn’t as big a deal as dozens of $3 transactions for individual trips. And I use a debit card for the monthly transactions, which have lower fees than credit cards.

      3. I think it’s fine to make credit card users pay an extra 25 cents to cover the transaction fees. But, it needs to be an option. Most people don’t carry cash anymore, and if you’re making a spontaneous decision to ride transit somewhere, you may not be near a place that sells Orca cards, nor willing to take the time to buy the car just for a single one-off trip.

      4. Not true. ORCA card is cost much more than credit card. Kiosk, processing fees, app, website, customer support, etc.

         With credit card bank handle all of these.

      5. I’d support a credit-card surcharge. However, contracts between credit-card processors and merchants prohibit a surcharge, so stores that add 50 cents to small transactions are violating the contract. This puts merchants in an untenable position between the contract and increasingly burdensome fees.

         With ORCA and similar transit cards, the agency has made a strategic decision to make this the standard payment method, and budgeted all the overhead. That overhead remains regardless of whether you use an ORCA card or not, because the agency still has to operate the TVMs, readers and website and issue cards. Without it we’re back to subway tokens and everyone paying cash on buses. But when people demand pay by credit card or pay by phone, that’s just giving a third-party middleman a cut of the fare revenue because they can’t be bothered to buy or carry an ORCA card.

      6. Are there any other agencies out there in the world implement surcharge for credit card?? Is it really necessary to pass the surcharge to users?
         Merchants in the UK are pretty anti-amex because of the fee, but the transit system doesn’t have issue accepting Amex card. I guess transit payment is either treated differently or the credit card cost is really negligible.

         Maybe you should do some research about credit card payment before suggesting something like that.

      7. “However, contracts between credit-card processors and merchants prohibit a surcharge, so stores that add 50 cents to small transactions are violating the contract.”

         In the case of transit cards, some transit agencies have a minimum amount you can add to the card in order to reduce the burden of the fees.

         This can’t be the case when the card becomes a regular ticket.

      8. If you use a debit/credit card for a one-time tap, the agencies you ride with for the next two hours will split up the post-fee revenue, which is to say it will usually be one agency getting ca. $2.75.

         For ORCA card users, the typical revenue per ride is much lower, ca $1.30 if I recall correctly, but well below $2.75.

         Thank you, everyone who pays sales tax!

      9. > Are there any other agencies out there in the world implement surcharge for credit card??

         Yes, TransLink in Vancouver charges a higher fare for credit/debit/cash users than they do Compass Cards (CAD$3.35 vs CAD$2.70)

9. [off-topic trolling about fare gates, by somebody who talks about nothing except fare gates and fare evaders]

   1. Our ad hom / OT warnings usually don’t engage in ad hom.

10. Need cheaper and more diverse pass options. Traveling abroad, 1-30 day passes always make sense.

    It’s a huge win for riders and a huge win for agencies given pass holders will never fare evade

11. Open payments can’t come soon enough.

    Perfect example – I was at 3rd and Virginia last night and a lady from out of town approached me asking if she can tap her card to pay the fare on the 24 or 33. I let her know this is not yet available and proceeded to direct her to the TransitGo app to buy a single fare, activate and show to the driver.

    It still blows me away that other cities with worse transit connectivity and lower tourism draw have this figured out years ahead of us.

    1. I supposed it’s useless to say why doesn’t she have three dollars in her pocket for situations like this. Did she say she didn’t have cash?

       1. It didn’t occur to me then to ask – I’m guessing she was asking because she didn’t have cash.

          Poor planning on her part for sure – I’m just saying open payment will remove a level of complexity and thinking involved in transit taking for those who have just arrived – wide eyed and looking for “Pikes Market”. ^_-

12. Now if we can only get people to pay their fares. Legions of people walk past the bright yellow ORCA readers, some unaware of what they are for due to no signage, others knowing that their chance of being checked is slim, still others forgetting in a rush to catch the train that’s about to leave (unintentionally). Putting in fare gates in the highest-volume locations would take care of most of the latter, while signage is apparently a faux pas for Sound Transit staff, who shy away from way finding throughout the system, and what they do put in is often confusing.
    Lately, I’ve been reading about reports of people not tapping at various locations, most recently at the Chinatown/international District station after a Seahawks game. Wouldn’t it make sense for ST to do som manual fare checking when there’s knowingly going to be a high volume of riders, or is that too much bother for them? Also on the funding side, one would think that it would behoove them to lobby the legislature to strictly enforce vehicle tab renewals. I see a lot of high-priced, new or newer vehicles with expired tabs, one recently was four years expired, with their fine if they ever got cited being the same as someone who was two months late.

    1. A lot of Seahawks fans do exactly as the signage asks: They buy a paper day pass on the other end before going to the game.

13. I recall to see a comment about it but couldn’t find it anymore. Is there any information about Orca Card in Apple Transit? Is that even in the pipeline?
    Among all the US transit systems that support open payment, only Chicago, Portland, SF Bay Area, Southern California, and DC-Baltimore area support apple transit digital transit card while there are a lot more agencies in the US supporting Android’s.

    I guess there are some challenges to work with Apple.

    1. No updates on ORCA card in Apple Wallets. Apparently there’s some serious tech bureaucracy blocking it.

       1. This is why I don’t trust competing companies to write software that plays nice with each others’ self-driving cars, or with cyclists or pedestrians, for that matter.

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