🚀 go-pugleaf

fungus@OCF.Berkeley.EDU (Hank Fung) wrote in message news:<a7tlt6$18p4$1@agate.berkeley.edu>...
> In article <_Q4o8.8207$pZ6.5506989@twister.socal.rr.com>,
> William R. Cousert <wrcousert@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >Do you know if this will be compatible with the system OCTA is implementing?
> 
> Probably not. OCTA just got the GFI Odyssey fare boxes, although there is 
> a space on the Odyssey for a smart card, so presumably all that is needed 
> is for the Cubic and GFI systems to talk to each other. But Cubic is a 
> competitor to GFI, so I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Cubic and GFI also work together on occasion. For the new fareboxes on
buses in the Washington DC region coming into operation this year,
which need to support expanded use of the Cubic smart card system
already in use for rail, the Cubic smart card reader is integrated
into Odyssey fareboxes. So, that particular farebox/reader combination
is now available more or less off-the-shelf.

Of course, if the fareboxes were purchased without the reader
integration included, OCTA will still need to make a financial
arrangement with GFI for that. If arrangements with GFI prove
difficult, an alternative approach that was recently selected with the
Cubic smart card system for Minneapolis is to avoid integration of the
reader with the farebox in favor of installing an independent reader
unit beside the farebox.

With UFS implementation, this sort of retrofitting of the Cubic smart
card reader into existing equipment such as fareboxes and ticket
vending machines will likely be arranged with several different
agencies. The whole process is quite analogous to the work that was
done over the past few years in the Bay Area, with the readers in that
case being implemented by ERG (a Cubic competitor).

Doug Parker
NOdparkerSPAM@NOmultisystemsSPAM.com
www.multisystems.com