:TransLink backers consider letting people pay for parking with card
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 Printable Version Email This Article delicious del.icio.us digg Digg technorati Technorati reddit Reddit slashdot Slashdot fark Fark newsvine Newsvine google Google Bookmarks (0) Georgia (default) Verdana Times New Roman Arial
Linking the Bay Area's public transit agencies with a single fare card has been challenging enough, but now transportation officials are trying to figure out how and when to add parking payments to the equation.
TransLink, the universal fare card intended to provide more convenience for transit riders who use multiple systems in the region, has been hampered by years of delays, largely due to software problems.
The so-called smart card already is up and running on AC Transit and the Golden Gate ferry and bus system, and it is scheduled to be accepted on BART, Muni and Caltrain next year. The cards are already being tested on a limited basis on Muni.
Use of the card at other Bay Area transit agencies is scheduled to roll out in phases through 2010.
The prepaid TransLink cards can be automatically reloaded. Every time they are used, the appropriate fare is deducted from the value of the card, which is embedded with a digital chip that tracks usage. More than 10,000 cards are now in use.
But although TransLink is still years away from being fully implemented, transit authorities are already thinking about upgrading it so that it can be used to pay for parking.
BART representatives are eager to allow their riders to use one pass to pay for rides and for parking at the station lots, and San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency is interested in having one card that will let people pay for a ride on a cable car, bus or streetcar - and to pay for parking at street meters and city-owned garages.
Officials with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and Golden Gate Ferry said they, too, are interested in having one card to pay for transit fares and parking at their park-and-ride lots.
"The ultimate vision has been to have a single card for both parking and fares. We don't want people to have to juggle multiple cards," BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said Monday. "But we've got to walk before we can run."
And right now, TransLink is still in the crawling stage.
The project is ambitious: connecting 26 Bay Area transit agencies through one fare card, and making sure that the fare revenue is funneled to the appropriate agency in a timely manner. Complicating the effort is the fact that most agencies have more than one fare structure - for example, some offer discounts for seniors and the disabled.
The TransLink Management Group, the policy body composed of top administrators from the major Bay Area transit agencies, is faced with deciding how to handle the parking issue.
The group, which met Monday, needs to determine whether tweaking the system to accommodate parking payments will delay implementation on the transit systems and, if so, whether the benefits of the delay would outweigh the disadvantages. The answers aren't expected right away.
"The concept of TransLink is simple. The execution is incredibly complicated," said Steve Heminger, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional agency coordinating the project. TransLink info:
(20min delay)
