Vancouver's SmartCard implementation for having everyone tap off on exit is going so badly that they are considering getting rid of fare zones so that SmartCards will work.
They bungled it by making it slower tap than Presto. Have you actually been there? It take light years of waiting, compared to Presto. Also, have you tried the London (UK) tapout system? Much faster.
They use uplink during tapout. Presto doesn't require uplink to register tapin/tapout. Vancouver is a bad example. Second-generation readers on our Presto is as quick as London Underground which uses tapout. TTC doesn't use those yet.
And the reason Vancouver's is going badly is not because of the tap-off requirement (which, again, happens in many cities globally), but because of the requirement for real-time uplink communication of the tap-off, which causes delays.
With some practice while running to catch a Lakeshore GOTrain departing 30 seconds later on Track 25, I was
running at full sprint speed in the Bay West teamway, and managed to
tap onto the presto without slowing down and it worked. I reached out ahead of me and swung my arm towards me (keeping wallet stationary over reader as I kept running) as I ran past the Presto reader at full speed without a minor slowdown, and saw the tap register before it passed by behind me.
With a few minor design changes, tap-on and tap-off should be pretty rapid. The stupid location of current TTC Presto readers are inefficient, and they need to put a slide-friendly Presto reader at the top, so you can tap in/tap out without slowing down. New generation tap readers can perform faster. The new-gen Ottawa readers less than half a second to register your tap, and with a little bit of proper design, you can run through a subway turnstile without needing to slow down.
Presto reader on the TOP surface of TTC turnstile, please!.
Yes, I don't care if it means some taps may fail if people slide their wallet too fast, people will learn to slide their wallet slower or swing their arm to register the tap without slowing down walking. That works on some tap systems. Efficient turnstile tap systems put the tap reader on the TOP surface. You adapt a tap-while-moving routine rather quickly. It's just as fast as Metropass sliding. Please copy that, TTC!
Uplink for Presto is only needed for faster stored-value refills from online -- that WOULD be nice. I'd like to be able to Presto within 5 minutes of refilling online. They said they are working on it -- at least for ground-based Presto readers -- but it will take a while.
Do it properly, and tapout is fine.
TTC if you are reading this (I tweeted a link to them on this post, they forwarded it to Metrolinx already), please follow London Underground's example -- and put tap readers
on top of turnstiles. Otherwise, TTC will slow people down.
Addendum to Engineers & Software Developers at Metrolinx/Prestocard/TTC: (fellow geek here) Yes, reading and writing an RFID card can be quite tricky especially if the tap is interrupted too soon... Yes, it has screwed up early cards in the past with incomplete interrupted writes to the card's memory. But there are techniques and algorithms to avoid that. And please study the London example and how they make it bulletproof. They made mistakes early on and found out tapin/tapout was much faster if the reader was on top of the turnstile. Putting it low in front to force people to keep wallet still, was a good idea from a software engineer perspective to force people to keep the RFID chip still while it was read/rewritten (with new fare balance). But the second gen tech is bulletproof enough to survive multiple repeated interruptions without damaging the RFID chip (Accidentally tapping too briefly) and people habits will change to slow down a tap by habit, and the commuters in London swish/zoom through the turnstiles without stopping, while tapping. That's impossible with current location of presto readers on TTC, since you have to slow down and stoop down a bit; in order to tap. By putting reader on the top, people DO figure out how to put a tapcard long enough on a reader without slowing down, and they will learn to tap while walking briskly. Presto can be as fast as expert Metropass sliding, if Presto is on the top of the turnstile! TTC and Presto can do it too!