This is a great example of small innovations that we need more of here - seemingly minor things that don't necessarily cost a whole lot but make an incrementally important distance to speed transit up. This type of thing only happens when transit agency cultures are based on a relentless focus on transit efficiency and customer speed improvements.
It really depends on whether a record is being updated in one place (on the card alone) or two places (card, reader/offline datacentre) or three places (card, reader, live data centre) and whether you trust the record on the card alone, or if you wait to reconcile with the stored record either in the reader, or back in the data centre. In many systems, the reader may also have data that it wants to push to the card, such as a new balance from an auto-reload the night before, a new balance due to reconciliation and fare-capping, or a new pass product. So how good of a computer are you putting in each reader, with how good of a data connection? How much trust do you extend to users in case something goes wrong? Is it worth it to extend credit to wait for that nighttime update if someone has an auto-reload flag on the account, or if the balance drops during the course of a day, do you reject someone at a fare gate? Do you do a soft warning for one day if something isn't looking right then reject on the second day?
For this one specifically you'd need a very law abiding population, which isn't always the case with North American transit. But agreed with the general point. I noticed in Seoul, their transit map has different colour station circles based on door opening position. Yellow circle opens on the right, black circle opens on the left. It helps when the train is crowded to know ahead of time which way the door is opening. Not sure why that isn't the case for Toronto/Vancouver/Calgary where we have one train per line so almost no situation where it'll open on a different side.
I can't speak to the technical details, but form a user perspective, I'm able to reload the card from my iPhone and use it immediately, there is no loading "wait period". There's custom fare zones with different prices and multiple operators (Tokyo Subway, Toei Subway, JR East, and compatible with every transit agency in the country). When I enter the station, my Apple Wallet gives me a notification "trip in progress" and when I exit, I see the charges on the screen on the machine and on my phone. This all happens in less than 1 second (they literally advertise it on the reader, that IC is sub 1 second lol). Not to mention the card also work in many convenience stores, fast food restaurants, processing transactions in a country of 100 million plus.
Classic procurement issues for Presto, over spec'd, low bid, focused on capital costs not lifecycle costs (even worse, the province was paying for the IT capital, and the municipalities pay for the operating), so end up with huge mismatch and lack of a single decider. For Toronto especially things were missed--the old system was mostly mechanical, and they had to run electricity and data connections to all the turnstiles as only a small number of turnstiles had had a very basic retrofit to run a magnetic strip reader for monthly passes.
The QR code system used in Calgary is far superior to a reloadable card as it doesn't require access to kiosks to distribute or reload cards, doesn't impose a delay on waiting for funds to show up on a card and doesn't have to deal with overdrawn cards. Most importantly, it uses low cost hardware that is easy to update so it isn't frozen in time.
As darwink said it depends on how many places you're sending data during a tap. For Suica, the response time is 0.2 seconds, which is achieved by storing information on the card itself while the gate handles the processing locally. The gate then sends and receives information with servers at 1 and 24-hour intervals (also allowing readers onboard buses to be just as fast). On top of that the read distance is a small radius around the reader so the motion of tapping the card (~0.52s) is part of the response time, essentially allowing the entire process to be instant. When you "reload" the card on your phone or a fare machine you genuinely are reloading it, not just topping up a balance on a server. Fraud is prevented by the servers checking the data and if discrepancies are detected a card can be automatically disabled.
There are a good amount of popular bars and restaurants along the route. I get why they're pissed. Bottlescrew Bills in particular is gonna get fcked by this. Also gonna negatively impact Barbarella for sure.
Funny thing with fare capping and cross agency trips. Presto hasn't figured out how to do it using machine logic within their system. So they run a manual report and fix the accounts every day. These things are hard!
This is what makes the system work. It doesn't (or didn't) have accounts with cloud account integration, and features like automatic top-ups in the background, protection against card loss (being able to move a pass product or balance between cards using the cloud), moving balances between cards without a specialized card reader/writer.
Construction will suck for Bottlescrew Bills but I don't actually think the line will rob them of anything that Gallery and Tenth wouldn't, namely sunlight. There will of course be the noise but I do think that should be quite minimal as the noise will be more of an issue for the... checks notes... above ground parking. I will concede it is a different story for Gallery and Tenth.
For a system the scale of Calgary, it probably doesn't make sense to run a reloadable card with all the associated infrastructure costs. The need to track origin and destination isn't just a cross-agency thing. Their networks are very large, so one could travel 2 stations vs 25, which should probably cost different amounts.
The ticket system works well. I'm curious if MyFare will eventually have a "card" feature where you get a QR code linked to a credit/debit card or account balance and scanning that will deduct an amount for a ride, a transfer, etc. automatically It probably can't be physical for security reasons (card with a printed QR), but available on the app.
