Furthermore, the rate of processing passengers through turnstiles is marginally slower with mag stripe fare cards than with tokens, due to the routine of putting the card into one small slot and retrieving it from another. There are alternatives to advanced transit fare payment systems relying on value stored on a read-write fare card. Automated fare collection using read-only fare cards is possible by recording transactions for subsequent billing to rider accounts. Buses of the Phoenix Transit System have fare boxes equipped with swipe-type mag stripe card readers, used to read Visa and MasterCards. Rider data is downloaded to a PC at the end of each run, and riders are billed once per month.
Information concerning non-acceptable cards is uploaded to each fare box.
This scheme offers the convenience of a cashless fare payment medium that many riders already have, less cash to handle, and the opportunity to collect ridership information. As presently designed, the machines that dispense fare cards in major U.S. subway systems take only cash. But planning is underway in a number of rapid transit systems including those in San Francisco, New York and Boston to introduce transit ticket vending machines that take bank or credit cards. Revenue service implementation of such a scheme at BART is expected in 1996. This move will further reduce the expense and risk of cash handling incurred by transit operators.