In November 2011, Cincinnati’s transit system, SORTA, began installing new fareboxes to replace their aging fareboxes. One of the larger criticisms this blog has of the new proposed Cleveland Avenue BRT project is the lack of a pre-payment option which would get people onto the bus quicker.
According to a press release, the new SORTA farebox can accept:
- Cash ($1, $2, $5, $0.01, $0.05, $0.10, $0.25)
- Metro Tokens (Silver = $1.75, Bronze = $1.50)
- Smart cards which can tap and go.
- 30-day passes
- Pre-paid $10, $20, and $50 swipe cards.
With the exception of the redundant Metro Tokens, the farebox would be a major step up for COTA. The most interesting option, the smart cards with tap and go technology, do not appear to be operational yet and it will be interesting to see how widespread its use is once operational.
The project replaced the 17-year old fareboxes in 342 buses for a total of $4.5 million with 80% ($3.6 million) being paid by the Federal Transit Administration and the remaining 20% ($0.9 million) being paid by SORTA. In comparison, COTA has 306 active buses which would cost $4 million assuming prices were similar to SORTA’s project.
For the year ending March 2012, COTA has operated $1.8 million under budget. The “Smart Card” fare system referred to within the 2011-2015 Short-Range Transit Plan is likely to be discussed in the October public meetings concerning the plan. Assuming that COTA can get a similar federal match that SORTA did, I think I have a bridge farebox to sell them.
I came across this post today from Google. I live in Cincinnati and the new fare boxes do have issues. The rolling 30 days cards are quite sensitive and it’s quite easy to ruin a card and it not be machine readable. It’s also not too hard if you lose or damage the paper sleeve, that the ink will start smudging. I commonly hear “coin not accepted”. I too am hoping that the smart card comes soon, but as of today, they are still working on it.
I am surprised that there have been such rough patches. But so far, do you consider the new fare boxes to be an improvement on the previous ones? I’m unfamiliar with the previous generation and how they worked.
I think overall it will be better, especially when the smart cards are available. Before, there was a monthly pass, only good for that month. The 30 day pass gives more flexibility, though still can leave a lot of fare unused if you take a week or so off at Christmas etc.
The smart card is the way to go. In fact, I wish Metro Transit would go with a smart card-only policy to avoid people digging around in their pockets for change, but the downside with that is that even if you added money onto the card hours ago it still might not show up and you;ll get a “No cash value” message like I did today. Even so, it’s much less of a hassle than COTA.