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| Re: Seniors to ride free on Septa RR (1482958) | |||
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Re: Seniors to ride free on Septa RR |
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Posted by lirr42 on Sat Aug 4 22:56:00 2018, in response to Re: Seniors to ride free on Septa RR, posted by BusMgr on Sat Aug 4 21:22:12 2018. I was thinking more along the lines of not standardizing fares or fare policies, but rather requiring fare media interoperability, with some sort of technical standard all agencies have to abide by, and a consistent definition/standard for what disabilities qualify for half fares, and maybe even a standard definition for what being a "senior" means (or "child" too), though a verified DOB could work too. Along the lines of what EZ-Pass does, where the definitions of vehicle classes (what counts as car, bus, truck, etc.) is standardized across issuers so you can pay the correct toll without hassle.Then it would remain up to the individual agencies to determine fares for each trip, like EZ-Pass. The information on the card, as well as any cash balance you might maintain should be communicable nationwide. Luckily, with several systems electing to have "open" fare payment systems (like Chicago Ventra, SEPTA Key, and hopefully the MTA's NFPS), where any credit card, or an agency-issed para-debit card can be used to pay, they would have most of the front-end infrastructure in place to support full interoperability. Agencies would just have to coordinate sharing information on the backend (which banks and credit cards figured out ages ago, but would probably take many agencies a decade to reinvent the wheel). Closed systems should be brought up to the same standard... I, and I'm sure even the most occasional domestic traveler, have a drawer-full of transit passes from various cities (most of which had to be purchased at an up-front cost). This country's various toll facility operators have already consolidated to basically four different toll transponder systems for each area of the country, and now that nationwide transponder interoperability is a requirement under MAP-21, they will hopefully one day achieve that. The same would be good to do for transit systems. |
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