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QuoteJULIAN SPECTOR
By and large, the way Americans book and pay for city transportation has worked the same way for decades.
The process of buying a physical ticket to access public transit comes to us from a distinctly pre-digital era, yet it remains ubiquitous across the country. In an era of globalizing forces, city transportation systems have maintained their local color and variety. That creates complications when passengers want to switch from, say, a taxi to a bus to a light rail train and need different forms of payment for each. Or when somebody travels to a different city and needs to buy a whole new roster of ticketing options to do the exact same thing.
At the same time, many of the world's great cities have charged ahead with modern updates to the way people travel. Japan's Pasmo pass lets users hop on trains, the metro, buses, and taxis, and even go shopping with a single rechargeable card. Hong Kong's eerily ubiquitous Octopus card covers all sorts of public transit options—trams, buses, ferries, trains—not to mention parking meters, shops, swimming pools, and "Chinese-style wet markets." The Dutch OV-chipkaart covers all public transit nationwide. These technologies harness the power of RFID technology to speed up payments.
Full article: http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/08/coming-soon-to-america-one-fare-card-for-all-transit/400706/
Chicago has come pretty close by just recently transitioning to their 'Ventra' system. It allows you to board any bus or train with a contactless credit card (or phone). If you have one of these credit cards you can walk up to a turnstile and go through without purchasing a ticket of any type.
If you want to buy an unlimited pass, or get free transfers you have to use a ticket machine to apply those options to your card. For someone arriving at the airport, they can just wave their credit card over the turnstile and walk in.
If you set all these modes up to accept credit/debit, the problem is already solved, without having to create some new system to integrate all modes under a separate card you need to go to a centralized location to pick up.