New York Subway Riders Master the Art of the Swipe
Michael Luo reports in today's New York Times about how New Yorkers have become experts at quickly swiping their MetroCard fare cards through transit turnstiles.
As it turns out, the number of swiping problems at turnstiles had crept up in the subway system after the elimination of the token in May 2003, statistics show. But New York City Transit officials scrambled to address the issue, and their efforts seem to have borne fruit, with the number of service calls to turnstiles hitting historic lows lately.Officials attribute the recent improvement to several factors, including a systemwide software upgrade, continued vigilance in cleaning the devices that read the MetroCards, and a last group of New Yorkers finally getting the hang of that simple little motion that has become a part of the city's DNA.
With the maintenance issues associated with the heavy usage of mag stripe readers at fare collection turnstiles, the transit fare card appears to be an ideal application for RFID-based proximity payment technology.
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