BC Transit is moving to tap card technology but they are choosing a different path than other transit providers in major metropolitan areas.
Vice President of Business Development Christy Ridout says right now they are looking for a vendor to work with them on a tap card system.
“Right now we are in the request for proposal process. We are waiting to find out what the marketplace can offer to respond to our needs. We expect we should be able to enter in to a partnership sometime by the end of summer and then we will be in the planning phase. Our hope it that we will be able to start implementing in our first system in early 2020. We hope to have all of our systems complete by 2022.”
However Ridout says unlike Translink and its Compass Card BC Transit is taking a different approach.
“We aren’t actually going to be using a smart-card the way that Translink does. We are going to be trying to leverage smartphones. So this is more of a bring your own ticket type platform. Our vision is to enable people to purchase their fare products right online and then bring them with them to the bus using their phone. They will potentially be able to either scan a bar code on their phone or tap it.”
She says the phase one using smartphones should begin to arrive next year and be up and running B.C. wide by 2022.
Ridout says eventually BC Transit wants the capability for transit users to tap their own debit or credit cards to pay their fare.