Transit staff will travel to explore smart card options
Much to the surprise of Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Calgary Transit’s director told council Tuesday that staff will soon visit three cities to explore electronic fare payment systems.
Transit director Doug Morgan revealed over the next two weeks, city staff will conduct site visits to Vancouver, Salt Lake City and Philadelphia — all jurisdictions Morgan said have recently introduced smart card systems.
“We’re also in contact with the city of Edmonton, which has a contract out currently for a smart card system, as well as B.C. Transit, and trying to see if there are partnership opportunities there,” Morgan told council Tuesday during a budget week update.
The tour to evaluate the electronic fare payment technology in three cities comes more than seven years after Calgary Transit first announced its plans for an automated transit pay system, that would allow riders to pay for transit trips electronically, in 2009.
In June 2015, after spending $5 million the city is still attempting to get back “through all legal means necessary,” Calgary Transit pulled the plug on its long-awaited
Please, please, please, tell me you’re going to those cities for some other reason.
Connect Card citing reliability issues with the system and its supplier.
Nenshi said Tuesday he was “very surprised” to hear Morgan talking about city staff travelling for a project the mayor, “thought was dead.”
“So please, please, please, tell me you’re going to those cities for some other reason, not just to spend money looking at their smart card systems,” Nenshi told Morgan during Tuesday’s council meeting.
Morgan did not describe any other reason for the travel.
“In an effort to ensure we manage the risk appropriately, we had some limited site visits planned in order to talk to those jurisdictions and ensure we understand what the challenges to implementation are,” Morgan said in response to Nenshi’s question.
The conversation was sparked on Tuesday after Ward 1 Coun. Ward Sutherland told Morgan a lot of citizens want to know when a smart card fare system will be rolled out in Calgary.
“I hate to ask this question, but I’m going to ask anyways, because I get lots of residents asking,” Sutherland said.
Morgan said several challenges exist to introducing a smart card, including the fact technology changes very quickly, and Calgary Transit’s current system is very cost-efficient.
“We want to be careful that we can get a return on investment,” he said. While he offered no timeline on Tuesday, at a committee meeting in July, Morgan said the implementation of an automated pay system was still two to four years away.