Grand River Transit

[Canard]

But it's not branded as ion. There are no ion logos at any of the stops, and the busses are still called iXpress. The ion busses don't come online until 2017.

[DKsan]

The front of the card should say easyGO. That's it. The back can have all the relevant info about where it's accepted. The front should be clean and not cluttered like it is currently.

Also, the system starts going live next year. It will probably say Ion on the back because it makes no sense for there to be two different production runs of the same card. It would be even easier to just say "this card accepted everywhere you see the easy GO logo", so the region doesn't attempt to put all their transit logos on one card.

[timio]

The report at Council last June suggests the fare management system was supposed to be running by this fall, not 2016.  I'm curious what happened to delay the roll-out.

[Markster]

Probably the things that always happen, little slips in time here and there.
Realistically, the deadline is when ION is up and running, and the process was started early enough to allow this kind of slippage. There's no need to rush to meet an arbitrarily early date and screw things up.

The latest I heard was that they would be doing small scale testing through the Fall, with the system going fully live sometime in 2016.

[KevinL]

All the bus fareboxes have to be replaced before they can do full rollout, so that could take some time.

[Viewfromthe42]

An easy way to do preliminary testing would be for the corporate users who buy year-long packs of passes (such as myself, through my $5 Carshare membership) to be given EasyGO cards. Bus drivers who had the system would be able to scan it and see a monthly pass (for any of months 1-12 in the pack that an individual user is on). Bus drivers who did not have a system could be dealt with in one of two ways. Either you ask the person to continue carrying around their corporate card for this case (inconvenient, and means two cards are floating around), or you only give the cards to those who have at least X number of months left, where X is the time to a full rollout. Then, drivers without the system would know that seeing an EasyGO card is equivalent to seeing a corporate pass.

[timc]

An easy way to do preliminary testing would be for the corporate users who buy year-long packs of passes (such as myself, through my $5 Carshare membership) to be given EasyGO cards. Bus drivers who had the system would be able to scan it and see a monthly pass (for any of months 1-12 in the pack that an individual user is on). Bus drivers who did not have a system could be dealt with in one of two ways. Either you ask the person to continue carrying around their corporate card for this case (inconvenient, and means two cards are floating around), or you only give the cards to those who have at least X number of months left, where X is the time to a full rollout. Then, drivers without the system would know that seeing an EasyGO card is equivalent to seeing a corporate pass.

Don't corporate passes have a photo on them?

[timio]

Don't corporate passes have a photo on them?

Yep.

[chutten]

The photo is to keep it from being transferable.

Which raises the question: how are non-transferable fare products going to be loaded on the EasyGO card? Because if there is no mechanism, then there's no reason to worry about the lack of photo.

And no reason to keep requiring students/other passholders to have their photos taken.

[Viewfromthe42]

Proceeding towards a TTC and GO type system, where the card must only be present on the single rider using it, would be wonderful. I don't think anyone would be inconvenienced by not having their photo on a card, but anyone for whom a monthly pass would become an option were it to be usable by all family members would be a new potential sale.

[MidTowner]

Proceeding towards a TTC and GO type system, where the card must only be present on the single rider using it, would be wonderful. I don't think anyone would be inconvenienced by not having their photo on a card, but anyone for whom a monthly pass would become an option were it to be usable by all family members would be a new potential sale.

Seconded. I've used transit in cities where the card can be used by other riders, and it's great when one person in the family commutes. No need to do the math each month on whether a pass makes sense as a multiple of tickets, since one or the other spouse "might" use it on an evening or weekend once or twice.

[timc]

The photo is to keep it from being transferable.

Which raises the question: how are non-transferable fare products going to be loaded on the EasyGO card? Because if there is no mechanism, then there's no reason to worry about the lack of photo.

And no reason to keep requiring students/other passholders to have their photos taken.

I hadn't even connected those dots in my head. You're right though.

[numberguy]

I don't think transferring EasyGO cards is on GRT's radar. It's so easy to print out fare tickets on a colour printer, as it is.

[rangersfan]

Many bus shelters were damaged overnight by reckless vandalism.

http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/mobile/dozen...-1.2603587

[mpd618]

GRT is unionized.   ION is not (so far).    Hence, the branding cannot be unified.   

I don't see how that follows. Pretty sure that with smart card branding, the Region is just trying to minimize confusion while using its extremely limited internal design resources.