Chicago Card
| Location | Chicago |
|---|---|
| Technology | |
| Manager | RFID |
| Currency | USD |
| Stored-value | Pay-Per-Ride |
| Validity | |
| Variants |
|
| Website | www.chicago-card.com |
The Chicago Card and the Chicago Card Plus were contactless smart cards used by riders of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Pace to electronically pay for bus and train fares in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA and the surrounding suburbs. On June 1, 2014, CTA and Pace stopped accepting these cards as part of a transition to Ventra.
The blue Chicago Card was a stored value card. Users added value to the card at CTA vending machines or at select retail locations, and turnstiles or fareboxes deducted value from the card. Users usually registered cards with CTA and could receive a replacement in the event of theft, loss, or damage to the card.
The blue-and-gold Chicago Card Plus was an account-based card. Users linked the card to either a credit card, debit card, or employer-provided transit benefit program. The cards could be set up as monthly passes or on a pay-per-use basis. The account reloaded from the linked source either when the monthly pass expired or when a user-defined threshold was passed on a pay-per-use card. Because of this direct link to personal accounts, all Chicago Card Plus cards were registered by their users.
CTA's Automated Fare Collection (AFC) system was installed in 1997 by Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc., the largest provider of AFC systems in the USA. The AFC system replaced the CTA’s tokens with magnetic-stripe stored-value cards printed on plastic or paper based on Cubic's earlier MetroCard implementation in New York City. All fare collection and payment equipment was designed to be retrofitted at a later date with smart card readers, a technology that was on the horizon. A small pilot program (“Chicago Gold”) for reduced-fare disabled riders in 1999 led to a contract with Cubic to install smart card readers universally in 2000. In August 2000, a more extensive “Chicago Card” pilot program distributed stored-value smart cards to volunteer participants. The pilot program was expanded system-wide in November 2002. The Chicago Card Plus debuted in January 2004. “Go Lane” card readers were installed in the buses, starting in 2005, allowing Chicago Card users to bypass the line of passengers using the farebox; however, only one payment could be accepted at a time, eliminating this possible efficiency. The Go Lane card readers were removed starting in May 2010 and Chicago Card card readers were moved back to the main fare box.
...
Wikipedia