Fare Cards’ Versatility May Put Transit Tokens Onto a Sidetrack

The Southern California Rapid Transit District never got a chance to save the Red Cars. The last line in Los Angeles’ once-extensive streetcar network was closed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1963, a year before the MTA was transformed into the RTD.

Now, however, the Rapid Transit District has a chance to save another part of Americana--the transit token.

The RTD is considering a staff proposal to replace its paper discount-fare tickets with new metal tokens--an idea that not only could save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but also could help save tokens themselves.

Right now, the RTD board is puzzling over what to do about the 1.1 million Henry Huntington commemorative tokens sitting unused in an RTD vault. There are not enough of the slugs to meet the district’s projected needs, and staff has recommended a different style for the new tokens to discourage counterfeiting.

If authorized by the board, the new RTD tokens could be circulating as soon as November--the month that New York City is prepared to start phasing out its ocean of tokens in favor of electronic fare cards.

Until Los Angeles renewed its interest in tokens, many people feared that the New York City Transit Authority’s action could be the beginning of the end of the familiar metal slugs. New York, which orders slugs in batches of 60 million, is by far the nation’s largest token user.

However, some skeptics believe that even the RTD, which is thinking about buying 5 million tokens for a limited discount-fare program, may not be able to do more than delay the token’s demise.

“Is the subway token dead?” asked Norman Diamond, a consultant with Nextek in Northbrook, Ill., and chairman of the American Public Transit Assn.’s standing fare-collection committee. “It’s not dead. But it’s dying.”

For all its simplicity, durability and nostalgic charm, the humble token just can’t offer a modern transit manager the flexibility and data-acquisition capability of that 8-mil polyester pretender known as the electronic fare-debit card.

Tokens are not likely to join vinyl records and Beta-format videotapes on the technological junk heap, at least not immediately. For now, transit officials agree, tokens can work in some limited applications--for small bus systems that cannot afford electronic fare equipment, or big operators, such as the RTD, that still use buses on their busiest routes.

“It’s a nice, simple, proven tool,” said Thomas A. Rubin, the RTD’s treasurer-controller. “Tokens have been around for 100 years. If it’s not broke, why fix it?”

Transit tokens don’t break. Indeed, they’re as tough as steel. And as cheap as dirt.

The problem is, they’re about as heavy as lead. And, technologically, just as dense.

“Every time somebody uses a token, somebody else has to collect that token, transport that token, sort that token and count that token,” said Diamond. “Pretty soon what you’re talking about are tons and tons of metal.

“The token is an inflexible instrument too. For example, it becomes very difficult for an agency to charge peak and off-peak fares if it wants to. How could you charge 80 cents at peak hour and 50 cents at off-peak without asking people to carry two different tokens?”

It also is difficult to use tokens for what are called distance-based fares, which increase according to the length of a trip--an equitable alternative to the one-size-fits-all flat fare, Diamond and others said. And tokens, unlike fare cards, cannot automatically produce a torrent of data about ridership, revenue and other factors that can help managers improve service.

Fare cards are not without drawbacks. Even the cheapest cardboard version costs more than a token; polyester cards are more reliable, but even more expensive. It takes longer to validate a card than to drop a token in a fare box, which critics say results in gridlock at bus stops.

“Even though they are exploring these electronic fare media, there will always be a place for tokens,” said David Kilmartin, chairman of Kilmartin Industries in Attleboro, Mass. His company owns the Roger Williams Mint, one of the three big American token makers.

“They’ve been using coins for a long time because they have so many advantages,” he said. “They’re easy to sell, easy to carry, easy to use.”

But an increasing number of big-city transit agencies have been convinced that the bad news outweighs the benefits. And the shift to fare cards in New York--in some ways, the nation’s most technologically backward system, as well as its biggest--significantly accelerates a trend that tokens may not be able to reverse.

“It’s kind of like the demise of the typewriter,” Diamond said. “There are still lots of them around, and lots of people like them. But when you are serious and you have a lot of work to do, you use a computer.”

Even a token renaissance in Los Angeles may not last for long. Because as the RTD considers buying some of the most modern, die-cut tokens, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission is preparing to test electronic fare card readers on several hundred RTD buses.

Fare cards are an attractive alternative to tokens for several reasons, LACTC planners have said. Although the RTD carries about 85% of all transit riders in the county, many new transit services by different agencies are in the works, starting Oct. 26 with the inauguration of the Metrolink commuter train network.

Transferring among services could involve many different agencies--say, an Orange County bus, a regional commuter train and the Metro Red Line subway. The agency running each service would want its own fare, or at least a fair share of a combined fee.

Rather than force a rider to pay three full fares, or tote paper transfers that later would require manual division of a single fare, a fare card would let computers at each station deduct the right amount from the credits stored on the card’s magnetic stripe.

The stripe also could note whether the rider was transferring from another transit system, and let the computer deduct the proper transfer fee and credit it to the correct agency.

In addition, cards can be instructed to deduct special fares for senior citizens, students, disabled riders and children, and can charge discounted fares before and after rush hours.

Cards also let agencies charge fares based on the distance traveled. In San Francisco, for example, cards are used to electronically open the turnstiles at subway station entrances and exits. The turnstiles automatically record where trips begin and end, and a computer deducts the proper fares and returns cards to the riders.

Los Angeles’ Metro will not have turnstiles, relying on roving inspectors to check tickets. But platform-mounted ticket-vending machines could be designed to issue tickets that are good only between certain stations, making distance-based fares feasible.

This flexibility, and the added revenue it can generate, has helped fare cards threaten the transit token with extinction.

The nation’s biggest new subways, in San Francisco and Washington, were designed and built exclusively for fare cards and have never used tokens. Other new train systems, such as those in Atlanta and Baltimore, use tokens sparingly to supplement cards.

Boston uses them for monthly passes, and Philadelphia for one of its commuter lines. Both cities are considering whether to accept fare cards in their subways, as is Chicago with its elevated trains.

Despite this, the transit token until recently seemed assured a certain stature because it was the only form of payment accepted in New York’s subway system, which together with its bus network handles one-fourth of all public-transit trips in the country.

New York seemed hopelessly resistant to fare cards. Early card-readers were too delicate to handle the city’s passenger volume, too expensive to replace its 3,200 mechanical turnstiles. Unionized token-sellers and -collectors were unlikely to accept being replaced by card-vending machines. Tradition-bound passengers were expected to balk. Worst of all, some stations in the creaking, 90-year-old subway are not wired for 110-volt electricity, which any electronic system requires.

But after eight years of designing and engineering, hassling and haggling, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has settled on a system and late last year set out to discover if the “high corrosivity” magnetic stripes it selected would stand up to the rigors of its riders--and whether its riders would embrace cards the way they had taken to tokens.

Charles R. (Russ) Broushous, senior vice president of the New York City Transit Authority, said his agency installed 150 hybrid token-or-card turnstiles in some high-volume stops, such as Grand Central Station, then dispatched a platoon of “rent-a-swipers” to repeatedly enter and exit, swiping their test cards through the electronic turnstiles.

They worked.

Then they advertised for volunteers--ordinary riders from across the city and throughout the socioeconomic scale--to try using the cards in return for discounted fare. About 4,000 people in two batches signed up, and again the cards passed muster. The passengers loved them, Broushous said.

Finally, the Transit Authority issued temporary cards to 25,000 schoolchildren for what he called “the ultimate test.”

“It (the electronic fare card system) proved to be tremendously reliable,” he said. “More reliable than the mechanical turnstiles, though that’s not saying much. Some of the mechanical turnstiles are 50 years old.”

The card system also proved as crime-resistant as it was reliable, Broushous added, because there is nothing in the turnstiles to steal--either by jimmying open the armored coin boxes or, in celebrated New York fashion, sucking tokens back up through coin slots.

Tests complete, the MTA arranged adequate funding--a staggering $690 million, which includes the cost of rewiring stations and installing fiber-optic cables to transmit ridership, revenue and self-auditing information back to headquarters--then hired a contractor to drag it into the modern era for fare collection.

Broushous believes that the system will succeed in “conservative” New York, as it could in open-minded Los Angeles.

“We’ve literally traveled the world researching this, and looked at old systems like Paris and London, and newer systems like Hong Kong and Tokyo,” the retired Army colonel said, “and there isn’t a single place where people didn’t take to cards like ducks to water.”