SmarTrip’s delayed, but at least we’re not San Francisco

Despite the issues with new SmartBenefits changes and delays in new features, Metro is well ahead of many other systems of comparable size in number of smart cards and integration across jurisdictions.

Metro’s SmarTrip system is the oldest and largest of the major transit agencies’ smart card systems. SmarTrip launched in 1999 and now has 1.8 million cards “active in the system,” with 876,500 smart card transactions each day, according to data in a recent report by New York’s Permanant Citizens’ Advisory Committee to the MTA (PCAC). By comparison, the next largest, Chicago’s CTA, has 474,000 cards and 260,000 transactions per day on their system that rolled out from 2002 to 2004. New York, the largest transit system, is still in the pilot phase. Update: New York’s MetroCards do work pretty well despite not being proximity cards.

Metro also integrates a large number of agencies, 9, with plans to expand to 16. The San Francisco Bay Area’s MTC system, TransLink, now links 3 but is expected to grow to 26. But if we thought Metro was slow, at least we’re not the Bay Area: original plans called for all of those transit agencies to be part of TransLink by 2001, but there are still only 3: San Francisco’s streetcar and bus system Muni, Golden Gate Buses and Ferries, and Alameda County’s AC Transit. BART refused to join for years because of disputes over who would earn interest on the money paid in fares but not yet consumed.

Partly because of its older system, Metro still lags behind some other cities in features. Of the systems compared in the PCAC report, New York’s pilot program, the Port Authority of NY and NJ’s SmartLink, CTA’s Chicago Card Plus, and the Bay Area’s MTC system all allow automatic load, where the system charges a user’s credit card as soon as the balance gets low like on E-ZPass. The BART smart card, EZ Rider, which is distinct from TransLink but is being phased out, doesn’t offer autoload, nor does Metro.

On the other hand, SmarTrip does some things others can’t. Only BART and Metro allow paying for parking with smart cards among the systems in the report, though some, like New York, don’t offer parking as they don’t serve the regional commuter role Metro and BART encompass. And according to the chart, at the moment TransLink doesn’t offer any kind of employer transit benefit on the card like SmartBenefits.

By the way, the PCAC appears analogous to the Metro RAC, but the PCAC has a staff of six and is able to create research reports on important issues. Wouldn’t that be nice?