Councillor says he doubts Transit’s smart card system is workable

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/11/2015 (3947 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A digital fare system for Winnipeg Transit is more than two years behind schedule and the head of the city’s finance committee questions whether the system will ever go into service.

Finance committee chairman Coun. Marty Morantz said he recently talked to transit staff and added he doubts the $18-million technology is workable.

Morantz (Charleswood-Tuxedo-Whyte Ridge) said the information contained in the administrative reports doesn’t reflect the depth of problems transit staff are having with the technology.

“Alarm bells are going off in my head around this one,” Morantz said Thursday. “It sounds like the technology is far from ready.

“Is this project something we’ll actually be able to execute confidently?”

The digital fare system was first proposed in 2003. Transit plans to phase out paper tickets and passes and replace them with a swipe card, dubbed the Smart card.

Riders will be able to load their Smart card with a variety of fare options — dollar amounts or a specific number of rides. The cards will be available from retailers across the city and can be reloaded online.

The $17.7-million project was to be in place in the fall of 2013. That was pushed back to the spring of 2014, then the beginning of 2015, then early spring of 2015, then the fall.

Transit director Dave Wardrop said he’s confident the remaining problems will be resolved and the technology put into service in the new year.

Wardrop said “small glitches” with the smart card technology has held up the roll-out of the new fare system.

“We remain optimistic we’ll have a project and a deliverable product that will be satisfactory to the citizens of Winnipeg that they will find value in and that they will find convenience in,” Wardrop said.

Wardrop told the finance committee that if field testing is successful, the system will be phased in beginning early 2016.

Other communities have experienced similar problems with the technology, Wardrop said.

Morantz said he doesn’t understand why Winnipeg purchased a technology that didn’t work from the outset.

Wardrop said Transit has paid the manufacturer $10 million of the $17.7-million project — most of that money was spent on the electronic fare boxes that were installed two years ago.

Wardrop said the remaining funds will not be paid out until he’s satisfied the system will work.

The first field test of the smart card was conducted in early June, which revealed lingering problems with the cards themselves.

The remaining problems were described as “minor glitches.”

“Indications are at this point we have a reasonably robust system with some small minor glitches and most of those glitches at this point don’t appear to be customer interfacing, things like book work generation and things like that where some of the bugs need to be ironed out for administrative purposes and financial tracking purposes. So those types of reviews and corrections still need to be ironed out,” Wardrop said.

“But all indications, based on lab tests in Chicago and again in Winnipeg, are that we have a functioning system but until you get into the field and do a field test and until you run into real-life circumstances, we won’t know.”

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca