urbanMSP

Ooh, good find. With the operator shortage, it would sure be nice if they could get more than one route per year through the Better Bus Routes program. And I'm not just saying that because the 11 is my route and I want it to be improved before 2026.

I just saw that Apple Maps has added the D Line to their transit map of the Twin Cities (it already had the Blue, Green, Red, Northstar, and Amtrak lines). But still no Orange, A, or C lines. Anybody know why they would add the D line so hastily but not these other lines which opened earlier?

My guess is that you'll be able to link your Hourcar account to your Go-To card, so you only need to carry one of them around.

Interesting fun fact, you probably couldn't do this with the Go-To card and Car2Go (the car share that to me would seem more compatible with a transit pass) because they use different NFC techs. Go-To cards are Mifare 8k chips (which are not truly compliant to the NFC standard) and Car2Go uses a "correct" tag (ISO/IEC 14443 seems to be the best name for it). The GoTo readers should have no problem reading the Car2Go tags, but Car2Go cars might not be able to read the 8k GoTo cards (My Nexus phone, for example, can't read the 8k cards).

Anyway, a bit of nerd stuff for you.

I suppose it's possible that the GoTo readers wouldn't be able to read "standard" cards but it's very unlikely. They should be able to read cards just fine. It kind of comes down to how MetroTransit has the system setup. THe 8k cards are called that because they hold 8 kilobytes of data, the standard cards hold much less data. If MetroTransit is using all that space, they'd have to pretty seriously reengineer their system. It could just be that they went with what was around when they implemented the system.

I don't really understand the history of the specifications enough to understand why there was a prevalence of these out of scope 8k cards. From what I know and some Wikipedia reading (on the NFC page and the Mifare page) it appears that MIFARE is a trademark of a company that makes the cards, and it's a proprietary superset of NFC standards. So there are probably licensing costs involved in procuring the readers and the cards. But MetroTransit must have made a concious decision to choose MIFARE, unless there was nothing else on the market when they started this over 10 years ago.

Another interesting aside, the Washington Metro (WMATA) SmarTrip card is standard NFC, so it is possible.

E: Just scanned my GoTo card, it's a Mifare Classic 1K, not 8K. But they do make up to 8k.

It's been a few years since there was discussion on the topic, but I've been curious - has the tech in our go-to cards changed at all? Now that we have a DFL Trifecta, it would be nice to have a universal public transportation fare payment card in MN.

Tap your card and hop on the light rail to downtown Minneapolis. Transfer to the Northern Lights Express to Duluth with another easy tap of your payment card. And then use the same payment card on Duluth's buses when you get there!

Same kinda thing with whatever else we might build and connect. Mankato? Saint Cloud? Rochester? As we eventually get connections to those places, having a seamless payment system would be awesome. Have the balance pay out until it hits whatever that fare type's cap is, and then transition it automatically into a weekly then monthly pass!

Much better than a balkanized payment system like in the San Francisco or New York City metro areas. It would be even better if micromobility, rideshare, and privately run transit (like intercity buses) were also required to accept payments from a universal MN payment card (whether that's a goto card or something new!)

Why have a separate card at all? I love that in NYC you just use your credit card, and it automatically handles passes after a certain number of trips per week.

Why have a separate card at all? I love that in NYC you just use your credit card, and it automatically handles passes after a certain number of trips per week.

Ugh, except they don't have this system for the JFK Air Train even though it takes NY subway fare cards... Had to buy a pass in November.

huh...

https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/ ... ro-transit