Smartcard a flop, says bus industry

Sydney Australia - The Sydney Morning Herald has a story on the problems of the roll out of the Smartcard technology in the Sydney area. Much of it mirrors the roll out issues for US transit systems.

US systems have been plagued with issues related to Smartcard technology as well. From card readers simply rejecting the card to glitches that effect how much money is on the card, I really believe that this is another attempt at rolling out technology before its time.

While the technology has become more reliable, it still is problem plagued and costs the US transit systems millions of dollars annually.

I do see the need for such technology but I will always maintain that it was introduced before it was ready to be introduced. Most every transit system that implements such a system ends up with years of delays in implementation and years of ironing out the problems once it is introduced.