The little blue ORCA smart card now is a common sight around the Puget Sound. About 470,000 customers have been issued an ORCA card since the system launched last April, and it gets used on about 200,000 daily transit trips.
The ORCA, which stands for One Regional Card for All, was meant to bring the convenience of modern technologies to our transit system. It is intended to replace various passes, tokens and paper transfer slips between partner agencies, which includes Community Transit, Everett Transit, King County Metro Transit, Kitsap Transit, Pierce Transit, Sound Transit and Washington State Ferries. That helps transit agencies, who previously had to redistribute about $100 million per year in regional fares.
The card costs $5. Those who qualify for reduced fares can buy one for $3. You can store between $5 and $300 on the card's "e-purse," as well as a regional transit pass.
Many people appreciate no longer having to fumble through change while boarding the bus. As with any new system, there have been glitches. Sound Transit, which oversees the ORCA system, is listening to feedback and tweaking the system to improve how it functions. Below are a few frustrations that people shared with seattlepi.com.
Question:
Before ORCA replaced paper transfer slips, Stanley Green could ride buses from North Seattle to a destination in Tacoma by paying one fare and transferring between three buses.
As long as he transferred between each bus within two hours, he was good to go. Drivers would hand him transfer slips between each ride.
ORCA now calculates and deducts the value of transfers and keeps track of that two-hour window down to the minute. But there is an anomaly if you transfer between buses inside the downtown Seattle Ride Free Area, as Green has learned. And it creates situations where his two-hour window expires before he makes all his transfers. The reason: If you catch a bus inside the downtown zone, you don't pay until the end of your trip. Outside of downtown, you pay when you board. So, if you ride a bus from outside downtown and transfer inside the Ride Free Area, your two hours are still being counted from when you caught the first bus because you don't tap your card again until you alight the second bus. If either bus is slowed by rush-hour traffic, your two hours might be over before the trip ends and you'll be charged another fare.
"I have had several experiences of having to pay a second full fare, even though I am boarding the next vehicle within two hours of having paid the first fare with ORCA," Green says.
"It's a de facto fare increase."
Answer:
Sound Transit is aware that situation can arise and has developed a remedy for it, said Geoff Patrick, an agency spokesman.
"It's not a frequent occurrence, but it's happened enough that we've acknowledged it's an issue," he said.
To avoid that from happening, bus drivers have been instructed to allow riders to tap their cards earlier in the trip if coming from inside the Ride Free Area.
"If a rider has an issue within a two-hour window, they can wait until after the bus has exited the Seattle Ride Free Zone and then tap their card. If they're headed south anywhere along the busway on Royal Brougham or Lander (Street) or one of those stops, riders can go up and tap their card and avoid having to wait the entire duration of the trip," he says.
"We want to provide that transfer credit within two hours, so that means when they got the bus, and not when they get off the bus," he says.
Question:
John McKinney frequently rides Sound Transit buses from Tacoma to Seattle and isn't too impressed with ORCA. That's because he has an ORCA horror story.
He loaded $26 onto his account last August but didn't need to use the card again until about six months later. But when he tried to take a bus in February from the Tacoma Dome station to catch a flight at Sea-Tac Airport for business, the card wouldn't work. The electronic reader kept flashing "insufficient funds," he says.
It was 4 a.m. outside the Tacoma Dome station and the Sound Transit driver wouldn't cut him any slack. He tried to explain that his account should have had plenty of credit, but he was told to get off the bus. He called his girlfriend for a ride and nearly missed his flight.
He later learned the card had been frozen because he didn't tap it against an electronic card reader within 30 days of putting money on his account, as ORCA requires. After contacting customer service, he was sent a letter assuring him the account would be unfrozen after March 1. But it didn't happen. He called again and was told he needed to tap the card at the office where he purchased it -- a Pierce Transit office in Tacoma. That didn't work either. Customer clerks at the Pierce Transit office said he needed to call the ORCA customer service number. Frustrated, he did, and a customer service representative finally fixed the problem. That was three weeks after the ordeal began.
"Hopefully my experience hasn't happened to too many people," he said. "I think as long as you're really careful with what you're doing and make no mistakes, everything should be fine. But if you make a mistake like I did, it creates hassles for months."
He'd like to see improvements in ORCA customer service and wonders why Sound Transit couldn't program the system to e-mail ORCA users when their card is about to be frozen. Also, he thinks the bus driver could have given him some leeway.
Answer:
ORCA users are required to tap the card after loading their e-purse via online. Many first-time users forgot or didn't realize that. It was one of the most common complaints about the ORCA system, Sound Transit spokesman Geoff Patrick says.
Sound Transit has since changed ORCA policy to allow users up to 60 days to tap their card, he said. The window was extended in March due to customer feedback, he said.
A time limit, however, is necessary to keep the system functioning, Patrick said. Tapping the card allows ORCA to download any changes to your account -- such as money loaded to your e-purse -- to the card's microchip. After you put money in your ORCA account, the system essentially waits to make contact with your card. If too many transactions were pending at once, the system would bog down, Patrick said.
"The way the system works -- at any given time, there are thousands of pending transactions that need to be loaded onto people's cards. If you had no limit, what you would have is a system-wide deterioration of the performance. Therefore we emphasize that if you paid online or by credit, you have to tap within (60 days). You can't wait for three or four years before you use the card again," Patrick said.
Another common source of confusion, Patrick said, is that it can take up to 24 hours to process if you load money into your ORCA card online. To avoid waiting, you can replenish your account via ticket-vending machines, which are placed at Sound Transit light rail transit stations or customer service offices.
Customers whose accounts are locked should call the ORCA customer service line at 1-888-988-6722, Patrick said.
As for McKinney's suggestion about e-mail alerts, Patrick said Sound Transit is considering that option for the future. "It's something we want to take a look at," he said. It could be possible for a number of issues, including to notify people when their transit passes are about to expire. There were other more immediate issues that had to be worked out first, he said.
As for McKinney's poor experience with customer service, Patrick said he couldn't speak to exactly what happened. "Clearly that represents a glitch in our response and one we owe him an apology for," he said.
As for the bus driver not allowing McKinney on-board, Patrick said each operator has discretion and can decide to allow some leniency.
Question:
David Wong recently took Sound Transit's Route 550 bus between the Rainier Avenue stop and the International District transit station. He noticed the driver still had the meter set for two zones, instead of one. The driver reset the meter when Wong pointed it out. But when he paid, an extra 50 cents was mistakenly deducted from his e-purse, even though his monthly pass should have covered the fare. (His fare was $1.50 and his pass covers up to $2). He reported the error and asked that 50 cents be credited electronically to his account. ORCA acknowledged the error, but instead mailed him a ticket for a free bus ride. The money couldn't be credited to his account because a $5 minimum must be deposited into an ORCA account.
The same thing happened to him twice more since he first contacted seattlepi.com.
"I assume this means the glitch that affected me is still taking excess money out of other riders' Orca card e-purses," he said.
He'd like to if Sound Transit is fixing the problem and whether it's a widespread issue. He's also frustrated that his card can't be reimbursed. The free bus ticket sent to him is only good on Metro Transit and it seems like it would be cheaper just to electronically credit him, he said.
"I'm not a novice at riding public transportation. I've been riding Metro since I was a kid. I have stored-value cards from several other cities that implemented the system before Orca, including London, Hong Kong, Beijing, Chicago, and Urumqi. I understand how these things work. I just feel that, in addition to the glitches in calculating fares correctly, Orca has a lot of room for improvement," he said.
Answer:
Sound Transit has no information to suggest ORCA overcharges are a large-scale problem, Patrick says. But it can occasionally happen if a bus driver forgets to reset the electronic card reader while within a zone.
Sound Transit is working with ERG, the system vendor, to enable refunds of less than $5 to be credited directly to customers' ORCA cards. "But for the moment, the approach we take is to offe
