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Several transportation agencies in the United States, including the Seattle Puget Sound Local Transportation Department, formed an alliance to jointly launch a system that allows passengers to take ferry, bus, and train by waving an RFID ORCA card. ORCA is a card with a 13.56 MHz passive RFID tag that complies with NFC specifications. Passengers can deposit money in the card and pay the fare directly every time they take a car, train or wheel in Seattle or neighboring counties.
This system, including hardware, is supplied by Vix ERG, a provider of automated toll collection systems in Australia, to help solve the problems faced by many passengers who use multiple forms of transportation in a single day. Many passengers arrive or leave Seattle by ferry, and then take a bus or train. Each transportation agency has its own charging system. In this way, a trip often requires multiple tickets, or passengers have to use cash transactions.
According to Sound Transit Research, Policy and Business Development Manager Brian Brooke, this solution is a contactless payment system that stores all transportation payment data on a single server, and passengers can use one card to pay for multiple transportation modes.
“Many residents live in one county and work in another. They use the services of multiple transportation agencies. The area covers the four counties of King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap, including Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Everett and Bremerton; Involved 439 bus routes, 12 ship routes, 73 miles of tracks, and 17 miles of light rails. There are approximately 500,000 trains and 3.6 million passengers in the area every weekday. About 300 different types are used in the four counties Ticket.
Readers and ORCA cards on railway platforms
In 2006, the alliance completed a BETA version of the NFC system test, and at the beginning of this year it was introduced to a small number of passengers, and it was fully introduced to the public in the fall. Currently, about 150,000 passengers use this card, but the alliance hopes that this number will continue to rise, said Cheryl Huston, ORCA regional manager.
Passengers can obtain ORCA cards directly by mail or from the agency. The user can sign the automatic upload fee method, so that when the card balance drops to a certain value, the system automatically deducts a certain amount from the personal bank account. The NFC RFID chip of the card contains 4 kilobytes of memory, is programmed with a unique ID code, and the amount of deposit, said John Winyard, director of Vix ERG. Passengers can also store expenses on a vending machine or in an agency office. RFID tags do not store personal information, such as user names and account numbers.
When passengers take a bus equipped with NFC devices (1269 in total), they only need to wave the card to the on-board NFC reader. The reader not only receives the ID code and balance data, but also deducts the correct fee and writes the new balance to the tag. inside. The reader also stores the ID code and the new balance, which will be uploaded to the Vix ERG server when the working day is over. When reading, if the card status is normal, the device lights up green; if the card balance is low, the device lights up yellow; if the balance is insufficient to pay the fare, the device lights up red.
Passengers read the truck in front of a fixed reader on the railway station platform, print the ticket, and the staff on board use the handheld machine to confirm the validity of the passenger ticket. Before entering the ferry, passengers wave their cards in front of an NFC cross-wheel gate to deduct the fee. The alliance has installed a total of 126 train station platform readers, 146 handheld readers, and 97 NFC ferry turnstiles.
The alliance has called for the participation of several major companies, including Boeing, to purchase cards for their employees. Participating companies can view employee traffic data from the ORCA website.
Vix ERG has adopted this system in San Francisco, Washington, Singapore, Hong Kong, Stockholm and Rome. The company not only provides software and servers, but also provides technical support.
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