The day after The Vancouver Sun revealed TransLink’s planned Compass Card system still won’t work on bus routes through multiple fare zones, the transportation authority was unable to point to another city in North America where it does.

TransLink cited Singapore as having a functional system where riders swipe a card on the way onto a bus and tap it on the way out, so they can be charged for the distance travelled. But the transportation authority acknowledged Metro Vancouver will look at following the lead of other cities and scrap the tap-out step.

A Sun survey of several American cities with transit smart cards revealed they do not have tap-in, tap-out systems in multiple fare zones.

“We have to go to a simplified fare zone and that’s what we’re looking at now,” TransLink spokeswoman Colleen Brennan said Wednesday.

Vancouver’s massively delayed Compass Card project was designed by Cubic Transportation Systems, which is behind several fare collection systems in cities throughout the world. San Diego, Boston and Chicago, though, require only a single fare to take buses and light rail anywhere in the system, so customers are not required to tap out when their rides are over.

Brennan said she couldn’t speak to those others cities’ policies, but noted TransLink initially opted for the tap out component because it fit with its existing pay-as-you-go, multi-zone system.

She expects TransLink will likely put in a single fare zone for buses next year although “those numbers still have to be crunched.” This will be a temporary measure until TransLink decides how it intends to move forward with distance-based pricing, she said. She doubts it would return to its three-zone system, however.

“The long-term goal is to get to distance-based fares but I don’t think we would go back to the way it was,” she said.

In San Diego, commuters have been tapping smart cards to enter buses and light rail since 2009, but they don’t have to tap-out — it is one price to ride anywhere in the city.

That city’s transit authority, however, also has a commuter rail line with three zones from the suburbs to downtown but, despite years of discussion, cannot figure out how to make the smart card work on that line.

“The way you guys are using it, implementing that component of the Compass Card down here is still in process because we haven’t quite figured out how to do that yet,” said transit spokesman Rob Schupp.

The situation is similar in Chicago and Boston.

The Chicago Transit Authority uses Cubic-built Ventra smart cards for the city’s one-zone buses and light rail, but its sister agency METRA did not adopt smart cards for its 12-zone commuter rail system.

“The challenge for us has been how to integrate a transit card into such a system,” said METRA spokesman Michael Gillis.

“To go to a tap-on, tap-off system would require a huge infrastructure requirement.”

Instead, the METRA rail system is using a Ventra app on smart phones, which allows customers to prepay for multi-zone fares either before or during their trip.

Boston has Charlie smart cards for one-zone travel on buses and the subway, but has a mobile app to pay for tickets on its 10-zone commuter rail system.

Nathan Woods, president of Unifor 111, the TransLink bus drivers’ union, said Tuesday that TransLink has been at odds with Cubic over the tap-out requirement, which is seen as problematic for busy bus routes like the 99B-Line and the No. 20 that see hundreds of boardings every hour. The SkyTrain isn’t an issue because passengers automatically tap in and out of the fare gates when they enter and leave stations.

TransLink acknowledged earlier this year that its field testing with a small group of users has shown the card readers are taking longer than anticipated to scan the Compass Cards, up to several seconds from the target of 0.3 seconds.

And TransLink estimates there is up to a 10-per-cent error rate on the mobile validators as customers tap in and out of buses.

In some cases, the validators will not register a tap out, which means some passengers could be charged a three-zone fare when they may have only travelled one zone. There are also concerns that Compass Card users could scam the system by tapping out early and then staying on the bus, thus not paying for a whole trip.

The system had been ordered by the Liberal government to reduce fare evasion on SkyTrain, but has also been touted by TransLink as a way to get near real-time data to improve service and long-term transit planning.

NDP transportation critic George Heyman said in the legislature today that the “Compass Card system has been a financial disaster from day one,” and is 14-per-cent over budget but still won’t work.

In response, Transportation Minister Todd Stone said he phoned the TransLink board and demanded it find a way to end the delays.

“TransLink does need to get its act together. TransLink needs to be accountable, and it needs to fix this problem,” he said.

Stone also said the government continues to support the Compass Cards, “but TransLink has to wrap its head around who's responsible for this program, who's responsible for these challenges.”

The problems with the bus readers have led to several delays with the roll out of the Compass program. Only 85,000 cards have been issued so far, mainly to TransLink employees and those in the BC Bus Pass Program, which serves the disabled and low-income seniors.

On Wednesday, TransLink announced Compass Cards would be given to more than 145,000 post-secondary students between January and August 2015.

“Delivering Compass to this key group of enthusiastic users of transit and technology is a step forward toward getting the cards into the hands of all customers,” Ian Jarvis, TransLink CEO, said in a statement. “Taking this phased approach to launching Compass Card will help us ensure we get it right the first time.”

But, under the original plan, students were to start using the cards almost a year ago.

Initially, TransLink said West Coast Express passengers — who still don’t have Compass Cards — were supposed to get them last November, and that the cards would later be issued to students and then to the public.

Brennan said issuing the cards to students would allow TransLink to test them across the system, noting students wouldn’t be penalized for not tapping out because they are only charged for a one-zone fare anyway. “It gives us some time to work out the interim thing about tap off,” she said. “We need time to sort it all out.”

TransLink, which hopes to have the program operating by the end of next year, eventually expects to issue 800,000 cards. They will allow riders to load monthly passes, single fares or a prepaid balance that will be detected as they pass through the fare gates that are being installed across the SkyTrain system.

There is no Canadian example of this system at work. Cubic’s website says in 2003 it created the Edmonton Transit Authority’s fare collection system, but that the one-zone transit city has not adopted smart cards yet. “Edmonton Transit is anticipating the move to smart cards in the near future,” the website says.

In Chicago, there were problems when Cubic’s smart card system was first introduced, which the Chicago Transit Authority vowed to fix. In a November 2013 press released, the CTA reported that tap times on light rail were “meeting most performance standards, but improvement is needed,” while bus tap times were “well below performance standards.”

lculbert@vancouversun.com

ksinoski@vancouversun.com

With a file from Rob Shaw, Vancouver Sun