Arc Smart Fare System

[EdwardEdm]

I was just in Toronto and got a PRESTO card. When you tap it, it shows you how much balance you have left and if a tap is a transfer or counted as a new ride. I didn't think about that back when the feedback portal was open, but would add that now. I also wonder what other simple things like this I haven't thought about!

Also, I noticed that the Valley Line LRT only has ARC machines. If it weren't delayed, would ETS simply have not worried about fare verification on the Valley Line? (I also think public transit should be free, but that's a different matter.)

I suspect it could have been that the VLSE was free, under the guise of being a "Thank you" for enduring the delay, when the reality would be they weren't ready with Arc.
However, with the Arc vending machines now reloading cards, it is possible they can get the machines selling single ride tickets for cash fares. That still leaves validating store bought tickets. I suspect it would be ticket users who would get a free pass, although, there would probably be an expectation to be able to present a valid, new ticket while travelling as proof of intended payment. Unless you're only using the VLSE LRT, if you need to transfer to the LRT or a bus to finish your journey then you would need to use your ticket at that point anyways.

 

[thommyjo]

I was just in Toronto and got a PRESTO card. When you tap it, it shows you how much balance you have left and if a tap is a transfer or counted as a new ride. I didn't think about that back when the feedback portal was open, but would add that now. I also wonder what other simple things like this I haven't thought about!

Also, I noticed that the Valley Line LRT only has ARC machines. If it weren't delayed, would ETS simply have not worried about fare verification on the Valley Line? (I also think public transit should be free, but that's a different matter.)

Are you saying the arc cards don’t show the balance currently?? Almost every card I’ve ever seen has done that…

 

[CplKlinger]

Are you saying the arc cards don’t show the balance currently?? Almost every card I’ve ever seen has done that…

From the pilot website

 

[supaflyryguy]

If you tap a card again within 90 minutes does it charge you again or does it know you're still riding on the original fare?

 

[CplKlinger]

If you tap a card again within 90 minutes does it charge you again or does it know you're still riding on the original fare?

It knows you're using the original fare, and does not charge you unless you go from a local bus to a commuter bus (I think in that case, it just adds the difference, but I'd need to double check my tap history to confirm).

 

[soupcrate]

It knows you're using the original fare, and does not charge you unless you go from a local bus to a commuter bus (I think in that case, it just adds the difference, but I'd need to double check my tap history to confirm).

Do you still have to tap off of local busses in order to not be charged? If so, I foresee a lot of pain in terms of disembarking time and customer complaints from being overcharged.

Also, what exactly is a regional route? Are those just the routes currently being run by the other municipalities?

 

[EdwardEdm]

Do you still have to tap off of local busses in order to not be charged? If so, I foresee a lot of pain in terms of disembarking time and customer complaints from being overcharged.

Also, what exactly is a regional route? Are those just the routes currently being run by the other municipalities?

The system still very much encourages you to tap off of local buses still.
As I covered here: https://edmonton.skyrisecities.com/forum/threads/arc-smart-fare-system.26805/post-1859297
A compensation fare is still charged if you fail to tap off, but, that charge is now $0.
Who knows what they may opt to go with when full rollout happens, although, I don't think they will got back to tapping off for compensation fares. This also starts to become an EMTSC problem. Indeed, long term, I could see tapping off required on EMTSC buses but no tapping off required on ETS buses.

Regional routes are, yes, generally operated by other municipalities, but includes the 747 which is partially funded and operated by Edmonton.

 

[superelevation]

Oh yea and the gong show of if one pays a cash fare on the bus, they have to buy a new cash fare on Skytrain since the bus dispenses tickets that don't have NFC required at the fare gates. Thankfully contactless credit card payment is transferrable to Skytrain. Or better yet, get a Compass card and pay the stored value rate.

One could attempt to forego Skytrain and take the bus to avoid paying zone fares but there are very few bus routes that run parallel to Skytrain and none of them cross the Fraser River.

One thing I love about Arc over Compass is the capped day/month fares. Day and monthly passes have to be loaded onto Compass before use AND they take about 20 minutes to load onto your card which I unfortunately found out the hard way. Or rather I was out an extra $2.50 for the day.

Oh, I had previously erroneously mentioned before that one does not have to tap off Arc cards after they reach their cap which is incorrect. Not tapping off Arc Card means there's a compensation fare and those fares DO NOT count towards the monthly cap.

There are absolutely parallel bus routes that cross the river, such as the Highway 1 Express routes, which parallel the Expo Line Surrey branch

 

[dkazzed]

There are absolutely parallel bus routes that cross the river, such as the Highway 1 Express routes, which parallel the Expo Line Surrey branch

It took me 5.5 hours to get home from downtown to my house near Fleetwood Park in the massive Skytrain shut down of 2014. It involved bus after bus after bus after bus, all crowded because you just can't replicate a service that carries 500 passengers every 2 minutes with a bus system. After awhile, I gave up and hung out with friends north of the Fraser River.

Normally though it would take almost double the time. With Skytrain, it's a train and a bus for an hour 15 minutes long trip. Avoiding Skytrain, it's about 4-5 buses for what I'm guessing is a 2 hour 15 minute long trip.

 

[Avenuer]

Arc is available to Standard Adult fare riders on November 21. Discounted fare options will be available for eligible riders in 2023. Paper tickets and passes are still available for all riders.

Looks like there's an official announcement about this today at 1 PM with the COE, St. Albert and Strathcona County present.

 

[CplKlinger]

Arc is available to Standard Adult fare riders on November 21. Discounted fare options will be available for eligible riders in 2023. Paper tickets and passes are still available for all riders.

Looks like there's an official announcement about this today at 1 PM with the COE, St. Albert and Strathcona County present.

That's very exciting! The link leads to the project page, which doesn't mention this. Is there another link avalible, or did they just scrub it for now?

EDIT: Spruce Grove's website mentions it too, and myarc.ca leads to the pilot site now. It's happening!!

 

[soupcrate]

Great news. Part of me worries that this will make boarding a lot slower. Flashing a bus pass is way faster than the arc card's tap. They really need to find a way to speed it up.

Comments from the peanut gallery:
What would really fix the latency issues is having a local cache of the user balance/passes database on every bus. Even with a million users, this would just be a few gigabytes and could run on <$100 of hardware.

When you tap your card, your balance would be checked on the local database and the transaction would be logged locally. Then asynchronously, the bus would send the transaction log to the central server for everything to be reconciled (could be every few minutes, even once an hour). The central server would forward incoming transactions to all the other busses (you could even skip this step and just do it at night if you want to save data, worst case scenario is someone's balance dips to -$15 instead of the -$5 cap thats intended.)

Having complete data integrity at all times on all busses really is not important. There's no reason that every tap has to phone home to a central server. So long as eventually everyone is charged for every tap they make, it's not a big deal.

Failing that, there are some simpler improvements (if they haven't been done already)
1) Ensure Arc servers are located in Edmonton
2) Get everything down to a single round trip server request
3) Switching from http to websockets

 

[Avenuer]

Great news. Part of me worries that this will make boarding a lot slower. Flashing a bus pass is way faster than the arc card's tap. They really need to find a way to speed it up.

If the cards are anything like Presto in the GTA boarding won't be much slower, but if the machines take a few seconds to identify the card tap (it is around 1 second with Presto in my experience) than that would slow things down a bit.

 

[soupcrate]

If the cards are anything like Presto in the GTA boarding won't be much slower, but if the machines take a few seconds to identify the card tap (it is around 1 second with Presto in my experience) than that would slow things down a bit.

From my experience, boarding with a higher % of arc card users takes 2-3x longer than the same number of people using bus passes.

 

[Gronk!]

Edmonton's tap Arc transit cards available to adults next week

Monday will be the first day adults can use the tap-on, tap-off system in Edmonton, Beaumont, St. Albert, Spruce Grove and Strathcona County

edmontonjournal.com

Electronic fare system for Edmonton and regional transit launches Nov. 21 - Edmonton | Globalnews.ca

Arc, the smart fare system for Edmonton and region public transit, will launch Nov. 21. The tap-on tap-off system allows users to pay as they go.

globalnews.ca

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592625366342184960