Old Transit Windsor bus passes are out, era of smart cards has started
Transit Windsor took its first step Tuesday toward converting from conventional monthly bus passes to electronic smart cards. The 15th of the month is normally the first day when riders can buy their calendar-based magnetic bus pass for the following month, but the old bus pass no longer exists for people wanting a $95.70 Tunnel Pass or a $157 Combo Pass (for riding the regular system as well as the tunnel bus).
From now on, they’ll buy a tunnel or combo smart pass, for the same money but with added convenience, Transit Windsor sales and marketing manager David Calibaba said Tuesday.
The smart pass can be reloaded over and over, in increments of 15 or 30 days, meaning you could load your pass for the entire year if you want. And instead of buying a pass for the 28 days of February, a new smart pass loaded with 30 days will run 30 days starting from the first time you tap the fare box reader on a bus.
Only 52 people buy monthly tunnel passes. “It was the smallest number we had (of all the rider categories) to test something to see how it works and the riders’ reception to it,” Calibaba said. There are currently two places to load the new smart card, at the downtown terminal and the Transit Centre at 3700 North Service Rd.
“As we move into more categories — into adults, seniors and students — what we’ll do is we’ll be expanding where you can load your card,” he said.
The first sale of the smart card happened Tuesday with a tunnel bus rider, who loaded 60 days’ worth onto the card, which resembles a credit card with a chip. The chip stores individual data such as how much time you have left on your pass.
“When we go further into launching, it’ll signify what type of card that is: It’s a combo card, tunnel card, seniors card, student card,” Calibaba said. He said Transit Windsor already utilizes smart cards for such programs as the University of Windsor UPass and the Corporate ValuPass (offering a 15 per cent discount for employees of participating companies). The current fare boxes take both the magnetic passes and the smart cards, but new fare boxes on the way will only take the smart cards. So Transit Windsor is moving to eliminate all magnetic passes as well as paper tickets and replace them with smart passes, hopefully by the end of the year. People who prefer individual tickets to monthly passes will eventually be able to load smart cards with individual rides, said Calibaba. The fare boxes will still take exact change.
Once the magnetic cards are entirely eliminated, the next phase of the program would add locations to reload your card. The final phase is mobile ticketing, where riders could reload their smart pass online or use their smartphone as their bus pass.