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Edmonton transit officials will be doing site visits next week to finalize plans for new transit smart cards — a new payment option promising to make buying a ticket as easy as buying a coffee.

The smart cards should allow transit riders to swipe onto the bus, and will be re-loadable from a home computer or credit card. They’re intended to replace transit tickets and monthly passes — currently sold for cash in LRT stations and credit or cash at convenience stores — and better integrate with regional bus systems.

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Eddie Robar, head of Edmonton Transit, said he won’t have a clear timeline until after the contract for the new project is signed with a vendor. But that moment is close, he said, after answering questions on a range of new customer-service initiatives at community services committee Monday.

“We’d still have cash, obviously. You’ll never get rid of cash,” said Robar, explaining a $42-million project that will be cost-shard with the province, St. Albert and Strathcona County. But “if you want to load your card, you don’t have to go to a store or anything like that, you can just go to a website.”