Popular Port Authority PATH Pulsed Transponder
Anna.Ma...@gmail.com
PATH SmartLink use has ballooned this year, with more than 100,000
users currently, up from just 17,000 in December.
As an added bonus, the Port Authority will insure the SmartLink Card
if it is registered on the Port Authority's website. Lost or stolen
cards will be reimbursed for the amount remaining on the chip-
embedded plastic.
Michael Finfer
Don't leave out the fine print. You get your rides back, but you have
to shell out another $5 for the card, and the plan is only good for
SmartLink cards used in the last two years, so don't let it sit in your
desk for too long (I loaded mine up with lots of rides before the fare
increase even though I am an infrequent user).
Also that article says that you don't have to take the card out of your
wallet, but the PATH web site says that you need to get the card to
within two inches of the target. My experience is that I need to move
the card around on the face of the target for two or three seconds
before I get in.
Michael Finfer
Bridgewater, NJ
Anna.Ma...@gmail.com
>
> Also that article says that you don't have
> to take the card out of your wallet,
Close: it says you don't need to "take cash" out of your wallet.
Try holding the card in your pocket and do a very slight humping
motion and see if it'll pick it up.
If so, take two or three pairs of work pants and have a seamster sow a
fly-weight card holding pocket for the card against the front
material, not the pocket. You should be able to hump your way through,
well worth the initial setup effort.
Just for hacking, see if you can spot a motion sensor (that would
initiate a pulse request to the transponder).
Peter T. Daniels
> >http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-11/12163558...
>
> > PATH SmartLink use has ballooned this year, with more than 100,000
> > users currently, up from just 17,000 in December.
>
> > As an added bonus, the Port Authority will insure the SmartLink Card
> > if it is registered on the Port Authority's website. Lost or stolen
> > cards will be reimbursed for the amount remaining on the chip-
> > embedded plastic.
>
> Don't leave out the fine print. You get your rides back, but you have
> to shell out another $5 for the card, and the plan is only good for
> SmartLink cards used in the last two years, so don't let it sit in your
> desk for too long (I loaded mine up with lots of rides before the fare
> increase even though I am an infrequent user).
>
> Also that article says that you don't have to take the card out of your
> wallet, but the PATH web site says that you need to get the card to
> within two inches of the target. My experience is that I need to move
> the card around on the face of the target for two or three seconds
> before I get in.
I touch my wallet to the plaque for about 1 second, and it registers.
Anna.Ma...@gmail.com
Perhaps it just regularly pulses.
It's a probe.
fur...@mail.croydon.ac.uk
> Don't leave out the fine print. You get your rides back, but you have
> to shell out another $5 for the card, and the plan is only good for
> SmartLink cards used in the last two years, so don't let it sit in your
> desk for too long (I loaded mine up with lots of rides before the fare
> increase even though I am an infrequent user).
I am also an infrequent user; maybe 15 or 20 trips within rather less
than a week once per year or so. I bought a card in May.
> Also that article says that you don't have to take the card out of your
> wallet, but the PATH web site says that you need to get the card to
> within two inches of the target. My experience is that I need to move
> the card around on the face of the target for two or three seconds
> before I get in.
I also have an Oyster card for London which comes in a plastic wallet/
holder which has three pockets for cards, one one each half inside and
one on the outside back. Since he Smartlink card did not come with a
similar wallet I put it in the other inside pocket of the Oyster one.
The card worked perfectly every time, not a single mis-read. There
does seem to be a slight delay between the card reading and the
remaining rides coming up on the display and the turnstile releasing,
but if I just tapped the card on the reader it read every time. I
have to add that I've only ever had one mis-read on a Metrocard, and I
must have made several hundred trips with those by now.
Having the Oyster card next to the Smatlink card in the wallet caused
no problems at all. When I returned to London the Oyster card
wouldn't read at all with the Smartlink card close to it; If I opened
the wallet out flat and just touched the Oyster side on the reader
then it worked, so the Smartlink card didn't need to be moved very far
away. Oyster readers show an orange light when ready to read, a green
light and a single beep for a successful read and a red light and a
double beep for a mis-read, invalad card, or other problem. I also
tried using the Oyster card with my security pass for work next to it,
and again the Oyster wouldn't read.
With the combination of the Oyster and Smartlink cards this isn't too
much of a problem since there's something like 5000km between the
areas where the cards are valid nobody would need to carry the two
cards together. However with this type of card becoming more common
it could be a real problem in the future, for example if Septa and NJ
Transit started using these type of cards, and they wouldn't read if
the other, or a Patco Freedom card, or a car park card, or whatever,
was close to it. It really should be possible for a reader to be able
to just ignore cards from 'foreign' systems, and still read its own,
as the PATH ones manage to do. TfL really do need to address this
problem with the Oyster readers before the contactless cards become
more common over here.
The introduction of unlimited passes on PATH is welcome, though I only
used one on one day. It is possible to have both an unlimited pass
and normal rides on the same card at the same time; if there's a valid
unlimited pass on the card then it will be used, if not then a ride
will be deducted. It's not clear if a card can be used by more than
one passenger, as the Metrocard can. There are some other features on
the Oyster card which can be useful; it can hold several tickets ant
the same time, for example, a bus pass, which covers the whole of
London, and a Travelcard which is also valid on rail systems, for just
certain zones. The Underground is divided into nine zones, with
almost all stations being within six of these. If you normally travel
between say zones 1-4 then you can buy a Travelcard for just these
zones. If you need to make an occasional journey beyond zone 4 then
as long as you also have some pre-pay on the card then you don't need
to by an additional ticket; the extra fare for the part of the journey
beyond the validity of the Travelcard
will simply be deducted when leaving the system. In London there is a
'cap' on the total amount which will be deducted from an Oyster card
on any one day, so it will never be more than the cost of a one day
bus pass or travelcard, depending on which systems you have used that
day. This has the advantage that you don't need to decide in advance
whether you will be making enough trips that day to be worth buying an
unlimited pass, as you do with PATH, but the disadvantage that a card
cannot be used by several passengers at the same time, as the
Metrocard can.
PATH having a few years ago started accepting Metrocards it was
disappointing to see that the Smartlink card is for PATH only. The
MTA seem to be having a small scale trial of a contactless card at a
few Subway stations, but this is a different card, is not generally
available, and is being carried out in conjucntion with a bank, so
only customers of that bank can even take part in the trial. The
Oyster card can be used on London buses, the Underground, Croydon
Tramlink, the Docklands Light Railway and on some suburban rail
services in London, with the remaining lines to be added during he
next few years as readers are installed at stations. All of these
systems are operated by different organisatons, but with Transport for
London having an overall Co-ordinating role. It's a bit like the way
that the HBLR and River Line are operated by largely unknown private
companies on behalf of NJ Transit. To be similar to an Oyster a card
over there would need to be valid on NY and NJ buses, the Subway,
PATH, HBLR, Newark City Subway and parts of the rail systems of NJ
Transit, LIRR and MNRR. Even in London things can be a bit
complicated, sometimes you have to touch both in and out, and
sometimes only in, sometimes you need to find a reader and touch the
card on that at points where you change from one system to another and
sometimes not. At least here everything's within Greater London, I
would imagine that it would be considerably more complicated over
there where you only have to cross the Hudson to find yourself in not
just a different city, but a different state.
Michael Finfer
> I
> have to add that I've only ever had one mis-read on a Metrocard, and I
> must have made several hundred trips with those by now.
I have also had only one problem with MetroCard over many, many trips,
and that was easily, but slowly, resolved with one of those postage-free
claim mailers. MetroCard has been very reliable since the initial
problems with dirty card readers were resolved.
> The introduction of unlimited passes on PATH is welcome, though I only
> used one on one day. It is possible to have both an unlimited pass
> and normal rides on the same card at the same time; if there's a valid
> unlimited pass on the card then it will be used, if not then a ride
> will be deducted. It's not clear if a card can be used by more than
> one passenger, as the Metrocard can.
PATH has no pass-back restrictions on its fare cards, so you can use
your pay per ride car for as many people as you like (but, of course,
you cannot use an unlimited ride pass to enter multiple passengers at once).
Michael Finfer
Bridgewater, NJ