Originally Posted by
kebosabi
It specifically says "you can use contactless bank credit and debit cards" and it mentions that you need to tap off so that the proper fare can be charged. If a SLC can do it (and they're not even the biggest transit agency in the US), I doubt it can't be done elsewhere.
I've used it a bunch on UTA, our transit agency, and it works great! There were a few bugs during the roll out, principally relating to being charged too little or nothing at all, but they seem to have gotten those sorted.
Only commuter rail has distance-based pricing at the moment, though the entire system is migrating to it. There is a terminal by each door on standard buses. For light rail, commuter rail, and bus rapid transit, terminals are located at station entrances.
UTA Police are charged with fare enforcement. They have handheld devices which indicate whether your card was properly registered prior to boarding, so your card itself becomes proof that the fare was paid.
Though I've never tried it, my understanding is that failure to tap your card against a terminal on exit leads to the maximum distance-based fare being charged (since they cannot know how far you traveled).
The way the charges are processed is interesting. They're not authorized against your card in real-time, but show up a day or so later. They're also un-aggregated. For example, if I ride commuter rail from Provo to SLC and back again, two charges for $6.10 appear on my card statement, one for each leg.
I'd have expected that they'd do the same thing Apple does with iTunes -- aggregate all usage across a period into one charge -- in order to save on merchant processing fees. Perhaps they felt that would be too opaque for customers?