Public Transit Users to Get Prepaid ‘Smart Card’

A single prepaid fare card will let riders use any county bus and rail system by September 2003, transit officials said Monday.

Los Angeles County’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Metrolink and 17 municipal bus operations have agreed to honor a “smart card” to increase ridership and convenience for public transit users, officials said.

Customers will be able to use the same wallet-size card on buses and commuter trains from Santa Monica to San Dimas.

San Diego-based Cubic Corp., which designed similar programs for Chicago and Washington, D.C., won the $84-million contract to design, manufacture and install the new system.

Starting this summer, the MTA will supply riders with regional passes resembling ID cards, predecessors to the computer chip-embedded cards that will be sold next year. Riders will keep the same card, adding money to their accounts in machines at transit stations and online, officials said.

“Seamless travel will be an added convenience and draw for the customers MTA shares with other agencies,” said Jane Matsumoto, MTA project manager.

Although Chicago ordered just 300,000 smart cards and Washington only 250,000 after yearlong pilot programs, the MTA has purchased 750,000.

“This is a pretty aggressive roll-out,” said Anita Wolff, Cubic’s senior business development manager. “But the other cities have done the trial runs for Los Angeles and eliminated experimentation.”

In Washington, D.C., the card has been linked to non-transit uses through deals between Cubic and private companies. Cubic officials envision someday expanding smart cards to function as university ID cards and debit cards.

MTA is brainstorming ideas for the name and design of the card, created to work without being removed from wallets or purses.

After the system is implemented, each bus and train will have a card-reader-equipped fare box. Customers will wave their cards near the 3-foot-tall gray machines with wireless transmitters. Transit agencies will continue to accept cash.

Transit operators are overcoming the historical distrust between regional and local agencies in implementing the system, said a spokesman for Foothill Transit, the county’s second-largest bus system. “You look at the sprawling Los Angeles area and it only makes sense to have a transit [fare] system that’s going to work throughout the whole thing,” Tom Mullen said.