Contactless Smart Cards, RFID, Payment, Transit and Security

Bay Area's TransLink sees its 16-year one card goal within reach

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Some agencies holding out but vast majority are online

TransLink appears poised to finally live up to the scenario first imagined 16-years ago of providing San Francisco Bay transit riders one card that would be good on all 24 agencies serving the area.

The one card is now operational at five of the area’s transit systems, two which handle 75% of the daily ridership. That would include San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, known simply as Muni, and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), as well as three smaller agencies, AC Transit (Alameda-Contra Costa), Caltrain and Golden Gate Transit.

The only exception to that list are San Francisco’s famed cable cars operated by Muni, which have not yet been outfitted with readers, says Jake Avidon, TransLink senior program coordinator for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Oakland, Calif.

There are 1183 words in the rest of this article …

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The Bay Area’s Clipper transit fare collection program has reached the millionth milestone - 1 million active cards in circulation.

As of Dec. 16, there were 1,000,606 active Clipper cards in use, nearly a 30% increase from the 778,197 active cards in circulation six months ago, and a 142% increase from the 413,616 active cards in circulation a year ago.

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The acquisition expands UL’s reach into the payment card security assessment field and will enable it to provide security reviews of payment terminal, software and infrastructure.

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A Chinese couple who used stolen identity information from students at Simon Fraser University in Canada to obtain TransLink U-Passes, have been deported.

Siyuan Gu and Jing Wang pleaded guilty in December to using the forged documents.

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