Culture
Coming Soon to America: One Fare Card for All Transit
It’s working in other parts of the world, so what’s the holdup in the U.S.?
By and large, the way Americans book and pay for city transportation has worked the same way for decades.
The process of buying a physical ticket to access public transit comes to us from a distinctly pre-digital era, yet it remains ubiquitous across the country. In an era of globalizing forces, city transportation systems have maintained their local color and variety. That creates complications when passengers want to switch from, say, a taxi to a bus to a light rail train and need different forms of payment for each. Or when somebody travels to a different city and needs to buy a whole new roster of ticketing options to do the exact same thing.