Canadian City to Launch Its First Closed-Loop Contactless Card Rollout Today

Canada’s fifth largest city, Edmonton, launches its first electronic fare card today, with the closed-loop contactless Arc card becoming available for standard adult fares. An open-loop payments service will eventually follow, Cameron Grayson, director, transit innovation programs for the Edmonton Transit Service, or ETS, told Mobility Payments in a statement.

The closed-loop card project will serve ETS and six smaller transit agencies in the surrounding area. Edmonton officials had originally hoped to launch the electronic fare card program around 2016, according to reports. The delays had made Edmonton one of the few cities in North America of more than one million people to be without an electronic fare card program. Australia-based Vix Technology is implementing the Arc card project.

The project is budgeted at CA$53 million (US$39.5 million) for capital costs. This includes more than 3,100 validators for nearly 1,100 buses across the metropolitan area, as well as validators on platforms at 18 light-rail stations. Of the capital budget, the agencies have spent around CA$36 million so far, or a little more than two-thirds, said Grayson, speaking through a spokeswoman.  He did not release an estimate for operational expenses for the card program.

Up until today’s scheduled launch of the Arc card, the agencies serving Edmonton and surrounding areas have collected fares entirely with cash or paper tickets and passes. This fare media will continue, though ETS and the six smaller agencies  plan to eventually phase out paper tickets and passes. They plan to continue to accept cash, however, Grayson said in the statement. Two of the six smaller agencies reportedly will launch Arc later, not today.

The Arc card will be pay as you go, and the seven agencies will offer daily and monthly fare capping for standard fares, starting today for most of the agencies. Customers will be able to reload their cards on vending machines, at transit centers and at certain retail outlets. Sometime next year, plans call for extending the Arc card–including fare capping–to seniors, students and other discount-fare passenger categories.

“Once Arc is rolled out to all discounted fare groups, we will work on the open- payment component of the system,” Grayson said. “This will enable riders to tap on and off transit buses and LRT (light rail) in the region using debit cards, credit cards or tap-enabled devices instead of an Arc card.” He did not say when plans call for an open-loop launch, however.

Transit officials introduced the Arc card to university students last year and tested it with some adult users early this year. Edmonton officials had originally hoped to launch a closed-loop contactless fare card in 2016, according to reports, but delays, including those connected with the pandemic, caused the project to roll out much later. There reportedly was a successful pilot of a closed-loop card by ETS as early as 2009, but no roll out followed.

Before today’s Arc launch, Edmonton was one of two Canadian cities with more than one million inhabitants that had not been covered by a closed-loop contactless fare card. Both are in Canada’s Alberta province: Edmonton, the provincial capital, and Calgary, Alberta’s largest city. Calgary Transit still has not introduced any type of contactless fare card, though did launch a mobile-ticketing app last year. Most cities with over one million population in the U.S. also offer electronic fare media.

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