Page 196 - 捷運技術 第35期

188 Gerard NAJMAN AFC saga:From a magnetic ticket to all contactless payments

Major steps in the early years of Automatic Fare Collection

The use of the magnetic technology in public transport started in Montreal in 1967 with the
st
opening of the 1 metro line: our company, named CGA at that time, originated this concept
enabling the opening of automatic gates after the checking of the data on the magnetic stripe. This
became a “standard procedure” to control access to metros: Paris, Mexico, Rio, San Paulo …

In 1974, due to its station to station fare system, the new San Francisco BART had to
implement not only entry gates, but exit gates as well, and introduced the notion of stored value
card with the calculation of the fare to be paid at exit. The fare cards were printed and a non
sufficient remaining value could be transferred to a new stored value card.

In 1982, Hong Kong for the same reason also used stored value cards, but plastic ones with no
printing capability, to be recycled within the system. Two main reasons for that choice: high
humidity that would create jamming problems with paper cards and improvement of the life-cycle
cost by recycling several thousands times the same plastic fare media.

History starts in Taipei

When the DORTS decided the construction of a metro in Taipei, it chose the latest proven and
suitable technology available: an automatic fare collection system based on the use of recyclable
plastic magnetic stripe cards.

As mentioned, such a system was already in use in the Hong Kong MTR. It was about to be
implemented in the Singapore MRT. But Taipei added one more feature to reduce the risk of
demagnetisation of the cards: the use of high coercivity magnetic stripes which was brand new in
the market and needed to be processed by specific types of magnetic heads.

CGA, which was selected as the system provider together with K & C, was pioneering that
technology and Taipei became an early adopter.
This magnetic stripe card was already enabling to carry a
single journey ticket or a stored value as well.

At that time, the Taipei bus users could drop coins or a token
into a fare-box to pay a single journey or buy a 10-journey paper
card in a kiosk to be punched by the driver. In the 90’s, some bus
operating companies launched a magnetic stored value paper ticket,
but that fare media was not compatible with the technology to be
used in the MRT because of a lack of a common vision.

Actually, the DORTS was already aiming at enabling the use of the same magnetic card in the
buses: as in a lot of places in the world, it took years to achieve that goal, until a political will
pushed for it.

From the start of revenue service in 1996, the stored value became very popular among the
MRT users, reaching a very significant rate of use among the passengers: 68% in 2002.