High-Tech Bus Pass to Be Introduced

A high-tech bus pass soon to arrive in Ventura County will work on any bus in the county, store important rider information and allow passengers to hop aboard without removing the card from their purse or wallet.

As part of an experimental bus pass program, Ventura County bus riders will get the chance to try the Smart Card, a credit card-sized pass containing a tiny computer memory chip.

The chip is powerful enough to transmit information without being removed from a purse or wallet.

“We don’t like to tell people they can do that because then they start coming onto the buses with these huge purses and setting them right on the sensor machine,” Smart Card spokesman Ray Rebeiro said. “We prefer it if they take the card out and place it on the machine.”

Most of the $675,000 cost of the pass program will be paid by the California Department of Transportation, which received a federal grant to fund a state-of-the-art bus pass service.

Caltrans chose Ventura County for the pilot program because of the county’s manageable size and because of a new countywide bus service that will be launched this summer, said Ginger Gherardi, executive director of the county Transportation Commission.

“We’re a good place to test something like this because we have a lot of the same problems as larger counties,” she said. “But we’re small enough that it’s not as difficult to try out something like this.”

Caltrans will start installing Smart Card equipment in buses this summer, Gherardi said. In addition to on-board card scanners, Caltrans will install sensors on buses, allowing the agency to count riders who are not using the pass as well as those who do.

The equipment will also be installed on VISTA buses, the new countywide line scheduled to begin service July 5.

The Smart Card system should be up and running by October, Gherardi said.