03-04-2022, 08:43 PM
(03-04-2022, 05:32 PM)Bytor Wrote:(03-04-2022, 04:29 PM)taylortbb Wrote: GO/GRT fare integration should be seamless, but it never will be as long as we're not on Presto.
It could be, though. We both use the same NXP DESfire EV1 or EV2 cards. I'm not sure which one, exactly, but the they both work the same way.
The flash memory on the card is partitioned analogously like a hard drive, and each partition is called an application. Each partition/application can contain multiple "files" of varying structure, optimised for different purposes. Each application has two password key, read and read+write, and two for the whole card as well. With the whole card passwords you can you can list, create and delete applications but you cannot read the application's files. With just an application password you can access that application's files and nothing else. I believe you need the application write password to change it's, and not the whole card write password.
So all it really takes is a software change at customer service stations and kiosks to enable multiple organisations to use the same physical card.
I take my EasyGO card to the customer service centre at Benton and King and they zap ip to ass a GO transit application and a MiWay application, both with agreed upon preliminary passwords. Then when I tap at a GO Presto terminal it rewrites the GO application passwords to the proper ones and sets up the files. When I get off GO and then get onto a MiWay bus, that fare box changes the passwords on the MiWay application to the proper ones and initialises the MiWay files.
Obviously the integrations can go much deeper by sharing read passwords, or even the write ones, but I leave that to your imagination, but simply sharing one physical card as if it were three virtual cards would be relatively easy without requiring complex accounting ad payment schemes between agencies.
I just checked mine, it is the V1 FYI. It's been a couple years since I looked into it, but it's frustrating and unreasonable that the data is encrypted and unreadable by the card owner. I wanted to using an existing app or write a quick one myself to display my balance, but it's impossible with the way our card are currently configured. This is not an issue with other transit cards around the world. The transit cards in Japan even store some trip history (source and destination, cost of trip).
Japan is also an example of many disparate cards and systems that have come together under a single interoperable network. I don't know just how different the systems were from the start, and what the scale of software and hardware replacements were, but it proves that it's possible.