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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, December 8, 2002

City buses seeking smart-card payment system

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

City officials hope to start a smart-card bus payment system this summer that would offer riders a cashless way to "pay as you go" about O'ahu.

At TheBus facility in Kalihi, Ralph Nishimura sits at new monitoring equipment that tracks the movement of each bus. Smart cards will be introduced in July.

Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

The cards, similar to prepaid phone cards, could be used as monthly passes or for an occasional trip, said Kenneth Stanley, vice president of O'ahu Transit Services, which operates the city bus system.

They are part of a bigger push to offer high-tech improvements to the bus system, which has some 230,000 boardings a day, Stanley said.

Recent innovations include the use of a satellite global positioning system to automate on-board announcements of upcoming stops, and a $12.4 million radio system that improves communication between buses and a dispatch center in Kalihi.

Less noticeable changes include improvements to on-board air-conditioning and computerized diagnostics that help mechanics locate problems using laptop computers.

"Overall, the goal is better customer service," Stanley said. "The extra cost is worth it if it makes the system easier to use and attracts more customers."

The city issued a notice last week to vendors interested in designing, manufacturing and installing a smart-card payment system on all 525 city buses. The city hopes to have the new technology operating on some routes by July.

Details have to be worked out, but the technology, already in use in public-transit systems throughout the world, offers customers many options, Stanley said.

Monthly pass users could renew their cards through automated credit-card transactions; day-to-day users could purchase a fixed amount, good indefinitely.

"If someone lost a $25 card, our computers would know exactly how much it had been used, and we could immediately block use of the old card and issue the customer a new card with the remaining value still available for use," Stanley said.

"It sounds like a great idea," said Vai Saumalu, waiting at the Kalihi bus center recently to transfer to the No. 31 to Tripler Army Medical Center. "Sometimes you lose your pass, or it gets destroyed in the wash. Then you're just out of luck until next month."

The cards could be used by one person to pay for several people, even different fares for adults and children, Stanley said.

They also would record the time and location of each use, allowing customers a two-hour period to transfer to another city bus without paying additional fare.

About a third of the fleet now has an automated system that keeps riders informed of a route's progress through on-board announcements, Stanley said.

"It's a really big help," said John Touron, who was trying to find his way from Moanalua to Pearlridge Center by bus yesterday after arriving from Colorado two weeks ago. "It's definitely a good thing if you don't know where you're going."

The system uses global positioning satellites to track bus movement and convert the data into user-friendly announcements. It has proved popular with tourists and residents, Stanley said, especially for blind and disabled passengers.

"For the tourists, it's a big help in finding their way around. For the residents, they can ride without paying much attention until they hear their stop announced. For our disabled passengers, it's indispensible," he said.

The technology also is used to remind riders to renew their bus passes near the end of the month and announce changes, such as when a local route turns into an express.

With a new radio system, dispatchers can track the progress of each bus and immediately send help if a bus is stopped or off schedule. Each bus can be monitored visually, minute by minute, on new computer screens at the Kalihi transit center.

All this technology adds to the cost of each new bus, Stanley said. The standard new bus averages $280,000.

"But we get back a lot of the extra capital costs in reduced maintenance, better scheduling and less customer delay," he noted.