![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinThe thing I've always liked about the Washington Metro farecards is that there's a little printer inside the machine that stamps the current card value on it, so you can tell how much is left on the card. It adds the number to a column of numbers running down the left side of the card. I think the BART machines around San Francisco do that too—the two systems started up around the same time and use much of the same hardware.
The New York turnstiles couldn't do that because they have simple card-swipe readers instead of mechanisms that suck the card in and spit it back out again. And I suppose it's a lost cause for these proximity cards. Ideally they could build in a little display on the card itself; maybe some descendant of the eInk display will make that feasible.
The New York turnstiles couldn't do that because they have simple card-swipe readers instead of mechanisms that suck the card in and spit it back out again. And I suppose it's a lost cause for these proximity cards. Ideally they could build in a little display on the card itself; maybe some descendant of the eInk display will make that feasible.